Determine if email from government employee is legally binding [closed]

Question

When receiving written correspondence from municipal employees in Ontario, is there a way to determine if the information is legally binding?

For example, I received an email from an employee at a small municipality. The employee's job title is "Deputy Treasurer / Administrative – Financial Coordinator". The nature of the memo was: "You won't need to pay property taxes in this scenario."

I have received information from the Province of Ontario that contradicts the message from the municipality; the Province suggests that I would need to pay property taxes in this scenario. So, I'm concerned that the municipal employee is incorrect and that they will realize at a later date that they can indeed charge me property taxes, which would ruin the project I'm working on.

Based on the job title of the municipal employee, is there a way to know if this email is legally binding? Or can that only be determined in civil court?

I don't have a background in law.

Answer 1

united-states

In most U.S. jurisdictions, a statement of a governmental employee can only have legal effect if the government employee had actual authority to make that decision unilaterally (although reliance on a statement from a government official will at least show good faith if that statement ends up being wrong which will probably allow you to avoid penalties for non-payment in reliance on the statement). I know this from having litigated the issue frequently when I was an attorney who represented local governments in lawsuits on behalf of a local government insurance pool early in my career and could find legal authority to that effect with a little more time.

An individual with that job title might or might not have that authority. One would need to know more about the job description and property tax process in that particular municipality to know.

In contrast, a statement of an agent or employee of a non-governmental firm is binding on the firm if the agent or employee has "apparent authority" to bind the firm, under the universally adopted common law rule of agency law.

I have no clear intuition regarding whether this majority rule of U.S. law would be the law in Canada or not. This is not a core settled question of law under the common law that has the same answer in all common law jurisdictions.

Answer 2

It depends

australia

Non-governmental actions

Not every action taken by the government means that they are acting as a government. For example, the government enters into commercial contracts, hires and fires employees, and draws power from the grid every day; these are not the exercise of government power.

When the government is not acting as a government, they are bound by all the rules that apply to everyone else. So, a person who reasonably relies on a misstatement by a government employee can raise estoppel against the government.

Governmental actions

However, where the government is exercising governmental power (i.e. powers that normal people don't have), estoppel can only be raised where it does not interfere with the proper discretion or legitimate exercise of executive power in the public interest. So, if an employee tells you you don't have to pay tax and they're wrong, you have to pay tax.

However, however, if the executive has the power to make a legally binding decision, such as the Tax Commissioner's power to issue a Private Tax Ruling, then they are bound by that decision.

However, however, however, someone harmed by an executive decision has standing to seek judicial review of that decision. That is, the courts will consider if the decision was properly made - made within jurisdiction, free of error of law on the face of the record, made considering those things that are required to be considered and not considering those things that are prohibited from being considered, is a reasonable decision given the decision maker's discretion, etc. - and if it wasn't the decision will usually have to be remade.