Taxes, duties, levies and royalties
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Compliance

This program ensures liable property owners correctly pay levies.

Initiatives include:

  • using data to ensure correct exemptions are claimed
  • liaising with property owners, to educate them on their responsibilities
    • conducting field audits, which include investigating property owners, to validate their methods for determining concessions
    • investigating registered customers, where it appears they are overstating exemptions, including those who continually claim large exemptions
  • identifying and contacting owners who have not registered with us for parking space levy.

Common errors for parking space levy include:

  • not registering liable car spaces located in leviable districts
  • failing to lodge the annual return by the due date
  • failing to pay the levy by the due date
  • paying the levy without lodging the annual return
  • incorrectly claiming exemptions and concessions
  • failing to notify us when a car space is sold
  • not realising that the levy is applicable to all residential and non-residential off-street parking spaces within the leviable districts
  • not realising the levy is for using car spaces during the previous financial year
  • claiming a residential exemption when sub-leasing residential car spaces.

Case study: Incorrectly claiming the exemption

A parking space owner sought a review of our assessment of his parking space levy between 1 July 2010 and 30 June 2015.

They claimed they were entitled to an exemption for parking spaces set aside exclusively for loading or unloading goods or passengers, provided vehicles are not otherwise permitted to park in the space.

We carried out inspections of the loading zone at the premises on several occasions and they found that:

  • there were vehicles parked in the loading zone
  • no people or goods were loaded into or unloaded from any of the vehicles parked in the loading zone.

For the loading zone exemption to be available, vehicles must not be ‘permitted’ to park in the space otherwise than for loading or unloading goods or passengers. This would presumably require diligent supervision by the owner, or their agents, to ensure that vehicles were at no time allowed to park in the space other than to load or unload goods or passengers.

The owner did not discharge their onus of proof because, notwithstanding the photos of the signage referring to the parking area as a ‘loading zone’, there was insufficient evidence to prove that vehicles were not permitted to park otherwise than while goods or passengers were being loaded or unloaded.

The owner was ordered to pay the assessments.