Late taxpayers smacked by late charges

Wednesday, 18 July 2012 02:00 Ron Seymour Kelowna Daily Courier:
Tardy taxpayers will add a record $140,000 to municipal coffers in Lake Country. Twelve per cent of all property owners in the municipality north of Kelowna did not pay taxes that were due earlier this month. As a result, they've been hit with a 10 per cent penalty on top of the outstanding taxes. The number of delinquent accounts is up marginally from the comparable figure last year, when the district applied penalties totalling $138,000.  Penalties for late payment of property taxes have spiked noticeably in Lake Country since the onset of the recession in 2008. In 2007, penalties amounted to just over $80,000, but the total has risen every year since then.  Lake Country expected to collect a total of $19.5 million in property taxes for the municipality and other taxing agencies such as the school district and regional district, by the July 3 deadline.   But collections to date only amount to $17.6 million. About $500,000 has been deferred under government programs, the main one being a scheme that allows elderly property owners to postpone tax payment against the eventual disposition of their estate.   That leaves $1.4 million in outstanding taxes, representing about seven per cent of the total.   In West Kelowna, which also applies an automatic 10 per cent penalty to outstanding tax payments, 93.5 per cent of property owners paid their taxes on time, almost the same number as last year and in 2010.   "That leaves $2.8 million still to be collected this year," West Kelowna chief financial officer Jim Zaffino said.   The City of Kelowna takes a different tax collection approach,  applying a five per cent penalty in early July on outstanding taxes, and a further five per cent in early August. So far, 95 per cent of the total taxation demand of $207 million has been paid. Eighty-eight per cent of the owners of 51,120 separate properties have remitted their taxes. "That's right in line with other years at this point," said Matt Friesen, accountant for the city's revenue branch.