Kevin Jacoby, chief financial officer, City of Cape Town
An amount of R9.4 billion has been budgeted for rates income in the City of Cape Town’s approved 2018/19 budget.
Rates income helps pay for shared services which stretch across communities, such as fire stations, street and traffic lights.
It is used to maintain the City’s assets and infrastructure, to cover staff costs and finance charges associated with the City’s capital programme and for operating costs. It also helps us to help our most vulnerable residents.
Rates are not for profit and the City only collects what it requires for the Cape Town metro to operate efficiently and sufficiently.
A calculation is made to see what income is required to cover the necessary costs and that is the total amount for rates. We ensure that fairness is achieved between different ratepayers by conducting a general valuation of properties every three years.
The general valuation values approximately 870 000 registered properties in Cape Town for the purpose of billing fair rates to each property owner.
The value of a property as reflected on the valuation roll serves as the basis on which we calculate the tax rate for that property. A cent-in-the-rand is multiplied by the property value to determine the property rate.
The rates policy determines the rebates that are made to the vulnerable in our society. The City’s next general valuation will be implemented on July 1 next year, which will reflect the market value of properties as at July 2, this year.
Having due regard for our ratepayers, the homage we as a City pay to our ratepayers is to be an administration that delivers top services and that we continue our irrefutable intolerance of corruption.
We will always work hard to do better.
