LOCAL authorities have been asked to exercise their powers to establish emergency waiver schemes in respect of local authority rates payable by the seriously wounded hotel and guesthouse sector.
The call came from Michael Vaughan, chairman of the IHF Shannon Branch, who claimed that hotels and guesthouses were operating under an inequitably run system of ratings that was crippling businesses with excessive, out-of-kilter levies that were based on out-of-date information. He points out that the inability of most hotels and guesthouses to pay rates at current levels could have been remodeled had the rating system in the Valuation Act 2001 been rolled out in a proper and timely manner.
The IHF chief said, “Hotels and guesthouses are struggling to pay excessive rates in 2009 that amount to an unfair burden on enterprises which are already facing disastrous conditions and barely surviving. In effect, hoteliers are operating under an aggressive taxation system that imposes an inequitable burden in circumstances where there is also a clear inability to pay.”
