Residents across 207 municipalities plead for property rates relief 

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) recently launched a petition calling on residents to sign the petition if they were in need of temporary property rates relief due to financial constraints caused by the COVID-19 disaster and governments lockdown regulations.

“Our petition closed on 20 May 2020 and we received over 50 000 signatures from people in  207 different municipalities pleading for relief. Since then the situation has become more dire, as more people have lost their income due to the lockdown”, said Julius Kleynhans, Strategy and Development Executive at OUTA. “We have sent formal letters to each of these Municipalities, asking them to accommodate these customers.”

OUTA also sent a letter to the Minister of CogTA, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, asking her to accommodate those pleading for relief. “The Minister oversees Municipalities and Disaster Management. She applied very strict measures to assist in flattening the curve, but unfortunately, these drastic measures also had and continue to have severe repercussions for South Africans, businesses and the economy. We believe that the Minister is in a position to provide relief to those people and businesses pleading for it.”

OUTA received calls from people to help them engage with their Municipalities to obtain relief.

According to the Local Government Municipal Property Rates Act 6 of 2004, municipalities have the mandate to bring relief to its residents by form of exemptions, reductions and rebates on property rates as per section 15 (1) and (2) of the Act within an area affected by a disaster within the meaning of the Disaster Management Act, 2002, Act 57 of 2002.

The organisation said that a lot of municipalities have responded, stating that they are attending to the matter. “We would like to encourage those in need to approach their municipality for arrangements to ensure that they obtain the applicable relief,” Kleynhans added.

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OUTA is a proudly South African civil action organisation, that is purely crowd funded. Our work is supported by ordinary citizens who are passionate about holding government accountable and ensuring our taxes are used to the benefit of all South Africans.

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