Business in Vancouver
February 13-19, 2007
Issue 903
Fair business tax beat goes on in the City of Vancouver
Thumbs up: to the Vancouver Fair Tax Coalition and its persistent equitable business tax dirge. It might not be a top of the pops number for most Vancouver citizens, but it’s a message that needs to be heard if the city is to prosper and grow and if Vancouver is to reverse its outgoing tide of head office departures. That message, as the coalition’s name suggests, is focused on taxes and who pays them. In short: businesses in the city shoulder too much of the tax burden compared with residents.
But righting that inequity is a tough sell to most politicians, because companies don’t vote; residents do. Business, however, votes with its feet, and an enterprise exodus is bad for overall civic well-being. So when the VFTC cites a report that shows Vancouver residents using $388 million in city services in 2006, but paying only $217 million for those services through their residential property taxes, while businesses used $111 million but paid $292 million, and a Real Property Association of Canada study says that Vancouver and Toronto have the country’s highest business property taxes for the third year running, you know that something is seriously wrong with that municipal picture.
The city’s appointment of a Property Tax Policy Review Commission is a good first step in addressing the tax inequity issue.
But the VFTC, which represents more than 43,000 local businesses, will need to keep chanting choruses of its dirge until the issue is resolved. The city can’t afford to tune it out any longer.
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