The Council incurs costs to administer, collect and recover local taxation. These costs must include the additional element for pursuing payments that are not paid or not paid on time. These costs include bank charges, loss of interest on cash flow, operational costs such as staffing and computer charges and other overheads and supplies and services. Clearly the Council wiill incur costs beyond just the printing and postage of a summons. These business overheads are partly offset by the costs recharged to those that default on local taxation payments.

The Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992 and Non Domestic Rating (Collection and Enforcement)(Local Lists) Regulations 1989 permit the Council to charge costs for pursuing late or non-payment through the court which must be approved by the Magistrates. The costs to take effect from the financial year 2006/7 were agreed by the Court on 13 January 2006. These costs rise from 70p per summons to £3.00 incurring the Council an additional cost of approximately £11,500 per year.

Like all businesses the Council incurs costs to operate efficiently and the cost of administering, collecting and recovering local taxation for 2007/8 is estimated to be £700,000. The costs include an element for pursuing payments that are late or not paid at all, but of course it is not known which of the 54,000 liable payers in Guildford will require additional, costly recovery action. It is estimated that the Council will issue around 5,000 sumonses during 2007/8.

Paying attention to the court costs historically, the consistent number of tax defaulters, the annual increases in supplies and services charged to the Council and the increase for liability order applications brought in by the Lord Chancellor (10 January 2006), the costs charged by the Council for 2007/8 for the issue of a summons and the successful application of a liability order are:

Council Tax

Summons £63

Liability Order £20

Business Rates

Summons £83

Liability Order £20