About $8.4 million owed in late Emergency Services Levy payments
A TOTAL of $8.4 million in Emergency Services Levy bills owed to the State Government are outstanding, including extra charges for late or missed payments accrued since large increases.
A TOTAL of $8.4 million in Emergency Services Levy bills owed to the State Government are outstanding, including extra charges for late or missed payments accrued since large increases.
Commissioner of State Taxation Graeme Jackson has revealed the figure in a letter to the Opposition in which he updates incorrect information provided six months ago.
Mr Jackson says the State Government recently began using a new computer program which revealed $8.4 million was owing as of June 30 last year, not the $4.7 million he first reported in August last year.
The near doubling of the figure has been seized on by the Opposition as evidence struggling SA households are finding it increasingly hard to meet the cost of living, as utility bills also surge.
Opposition Leader Steven Marshall has pledged to roll back huge ESL increases announced by the Government in 2014 and says it will be a key focus of next year’s state election campaign.
In the correspondence, Mr Jackson explains that accessing an accurate total was delayed by the introduction of a new “revenue management system” that centrally collates information.
He said this transfer “reduced the amount of time available to recover overdue ESL liabilities” and “resulted in a higher than normal amount of unpaid ESL at the end of the financial year”.
Mr Jackson says faster updating of money owed will make it easier to recover from now on.
Mr Marshall said the ESL was “a blight on household budgets already burdened with the highest electricity and water prices in the nation”.
“(Premier) Jay Weatherill has shifted his budget crisis onto family budgets. All South Australians are paying for Labor’s mismanagement,” he said.
“As a consequence, SA has become the state of unemployment.”
Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis said every dollar raised from the ESL, including from late fees, funded emergency services.
He said the Liberals must explain how they plan to fund emergency services while cutting about $90 million in annual revenue under the ESL rollback pledge.
SA Council of Social Services executive director Ross Womersley said there should be an investigation to determine who was not paying their ESL bills and why.
Mr Womersley said some of the $8.4 million could be protesters, who have been part of a public campaign against the ESL, or businesses with irregular cashflow like farmers.
“At that size (of outstanding payments) it’s important to understand who it is that’s not actually managing to get across the line,” he said.
“There’s little point of imposing a fine on someone who is in the circumstance of being unable to pay because they don’t have the money.”
The Government has defended the ESL as a tax geared to fall more heavily on those who can pay, because the charge increases in line with the value of the property they own.
Discounts from the full bill also apply to a range of disadvantaged people including pensioner concession card holders, veterans, the permanently incapacitated or disabled and some seniors.