An incorrect mailing address was not considered enough reason for Wheatland County council to refund over $87,000 in tax penalties to a corporate ratepayer on two tax rolls.
Wheatland County council were presented with a request from Co-op Refinery Complex, a subsidiary of Federated Co-operatives Ltd, to cancel the tax penalties on two accounts and refund the corporation for the charge during the regular Tuesday, December 20 council meeting.
“We have had requests before based on error and…to my recollection, we have not made an exception, and that was based solely on applying the tax bylaw consistently and making sure we’re not setting a precedent for making exceptions,” said Wheatland County Reeve Amber Link during the meeting.
It was noted over 1,400 addresses in Wheatland County were changed by Canada Post in 2021, from rural route addresses to civic, or 911 blue sign addresses. This change also affected the county’s administrative address.
A notification process was undertaken by the county through Canada Post notifying ratepayers of the change to the county’s mailing address; an announcement was also posted to the Wheatland County website in April 2021, and a notice of the address change was also included on both the assessment and tax notices.
The letter shared a cheque for the full payment of the tax rolls was posted on June 17, but was returned to sender and payment was resent, with the correct address handwritten on the envelope, on July 7; the original envelope was destroyed.
As the payment was received past the due date of June 30, a five per cent penalty was applied to the two accounts as of July 1, totalling $87,281.05 and the corporation was given until November 30 to pay this amount to avoid further penalties.
While council noted the error appeared to have been due to an oversight on the corporation’s end, and not done out of malice, there were concerns if the request were granted it could set a precedent in the future, and create consistency issues as council has previously denied similar requests from ratepayers, both residential and commercial.
The request to refund and waive the five per cent late penalty fee was unanimously denied by council.
