7. The amount of $50,633,680.71 shown under Advances, Miscellaneous, includes two advances totalling $301,125.44 relating to the affairs of a company now in liquidation, full recovery of which appears to be doubtful, and also includes amounts totalling $117,985.00 which are likely to be written off.
STATEMENT OF RECEIPTS AND PAYMENTS
CLASSIFICATION
8. Of the errors in classification noted in the Statements as rendered, only the following were of significance: $5,878,088.87 credited to Deposits Unclaimed Compensation for Resumption, Registrar General, instead of to Revenue Head 8-Fees and Receipts. Subhead 680. Overpayments in previous years ($5,519,500.00) and to Expenditure Head 70-Public Works Non-recurrent: Headquarters. Subhead 450. Compensation for surrenders and resumptions ($358,588.87).
$6,891.13 credited to Revenue Head 8-Fees and Receipts. Subhead 650. Departmental services and supervision, instead of to Advances-Urban Council.
Appropriate adjustments have been or will be made in the current financial year.
REVENUE
9.
Assessment and Collection of Revenue-Amending Legislation. Cases still remain where amending legislation is required to safeguard the collection of revenue or to give legal effect to existing methods of assess- ment. As in previous years, administrative authority has been accepted in certain cases for existing methods of assessment to continue pending the amending legislation and a list of those cases has been sent to the Secretary for Administration.
10. Arrears of Revenue. Reported arrears of revenue as at 31st March, 1976 totalled $248 million, of which $146 million was still outstanding at 30th June, 1976. Although overall the latter amount was an increase of some 7% on the corresponding figure in the previous year, excluding arrears of Internal Revenue (which as anticipated continued at a high level, rising to $108 million at 30th June, 1976 compared with $89 million a year earlier) a marked improvement may be noted, other amounts due on or before 31st March which were still outstanding three months later, falling from $47 million in 1975 to $38 million in 1976. Major constituents of this latter figure were arrears of revenue on Land Sales ($11.2 million), Rates ($7.4 million), Fees and Receipts ($6.6 million) and Fines, Forfeitures and Penalties ($4.1 million), the amounts on the last two Heads again owing much to the arrears of penalties and court costs under the fixed penalty scheme referred to in paragraph 12 below. For the second successive year there was a significant reduction in the arrears of water revenue (at $4.4 million only a little over half the figure two years earlier) but there still remains a hard core of long outstanding amounts which are likely to prove uncollectable.
11. An increase was noted in the arrears of repayments of interest free loans made to teachers in training, which I have suggested to the Director of Education may to some extent be due to the inadequacy of the action taken to follow-up unpaid demand notes. The terms of the loans provide that they shall be repaid by not more than 48 monthly instalments to commence in the second month of employment after graduation or twelve months after graduation whichever is the earlier, but at 30th June, 1976 repayments of $379,000 on over 1,000 loans were more than three months in arrears, nearly half of that amount having been overdue for over a year.
12. Head 5-Fines, Forfeitures and Penalties. Subhead 030. Penalties—Fixed penalty scheme. The arrears of penalties imposed under the provisions of Section 15 of the Fixed Penalty (Traffic Contraventions) Ordinance, and of the associated court costs, continue their seemingly inexorable rise. As at 30th June, 1976, 105,500 cases (involving arrears of $8.1 million) had been outstanding for more than three months, an increase of 32% over the comparable figure in 1975. Of the arrears, $6 million had been outstanding for more than a year and as the Commissioner for Transport is responsible for ensuring that no vehicle is relicensed until all the penalties and court costs have been paid, it seems reasonable to assume that most of the vehicles concerned are no longer operative and that under the existing legislation the prospects of recovering the arrears must now be extremely slight. The contumacy of some vehicle owners is perhaps exemplified by the 150 of their number who, with more than 50 outstanding summonses each, owed between them a total of well over half-a-million dollars. In paragraph 15 of my report for 1972-73 I referred to the evident need for the imposition of further sanctions to prevent the accumulation of large debts. I understand that, three years later, legislation to this end is still under consideration.
13. Head 8-Fees and Receipts. Subhead 340. Medical and dental clinics. Section 8 of the Motor Vehicles Insurance (Third Party Risks) Ordinance, which was enacted in 1951, places upon vehicle owners or their
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