221360-1935-Supplementary-Draft-Bill--Rating-Amendment — Page 3

Ordinance

No. 16 of 1903.

Ordinance No. 34 of 1910.

Ordinance No. 34 of 1910.

578

(c) Nothing in this section shall be deemed to repeal or affect any of the provisions of the Waterworks Ordinance, 1903, or the New Territories Regulation Ordinance, 1910, or any other Ordinance amending or extending the same.

(5) The above rates shall be paid quarterly in advance at the office of the District Officer of the district and the times appointed for payment shall not be notified in the Gazette, but shall be published by him in each urban area in his district.

(6) Where default has been made by any person in pay- ment of any rate, the District Officer shall have the same powers as the Collector of Crown Rent under the Crown Rent regulations made under the New Territories Regulation. Ordinance, 1910, and the said Regulations (necessary changes being made) shall apply to the recovery of rates.

(7) Refund of rates may be made by a District Officer on the same terms and subject to the same conditions and right of appeal as those set out in sections 35, 36, 37 and 38: Provided that in the case of a building let to more than one tenant, one or more of the floors of which is unoccupied during one or more entire months of any quarter, it shall be lawful for a District Officer to grant in respect of such non-occupation a refund not exceeding twenty per cent of the rates payable for that quarter.

(8) The forms in the schedule may be adapted and modified as the District Officers may find necessary.

Objects and Reasons.

1. Despite the fact that there is no provision in the Rating Ordinance, 1901, excluding the New Territories from the operation of that Ordinance, no assessment or collection of rates has hitherto been made outside the boundaries of the island of Hong Kong and of Kowloon and New Kowloon.

2. With the granting of certain benefits in the way of street lighting, street maintenance, drainage, water supply, scavenging, etc., to such areas as Taipo Market, Yuen Long, and Tsuen Wan, it is considered that some form of rating should be applied in the case of such urban areas in the New Territories.

3. Accordingly, the present Bill adds to the Rating Ordinance, 1901, a new section (Section 49) in eight sub- sections establishing in the New Territories (other than New Kowloon) a modified system of rating of which the salient features are as follows:

(a) The District Officers in their respective districts are given the powers and duties of the Assessor of Rates and the Colonial Treasurer under the Ordinance (s.s. 1);

(b) Rates are to be imposed upon such parts of the Territories as are declared by the Governor in Council to be urban areas and in respect of buildings only (s.s. 2);