The Province
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Page: A17
Section: News
Byline: Christina Montgomery
Higher burden to be put on homeowners; VANCOUVER: Public given opportunity to speak about latest tax hike
Vancouver residents are about to get a chance to say what they think of shifting more of next year's taxes off local businesses and on to the city's homeowners.
Opposition councillors already have an answer: Don't do it.
Mayor Sam Sullivan's majority NPA caucus appears likely to back the plan, which will be tabled with other budget measures for public comment in late February.
The plan would shift one per cent of the tax burden, every year for five years, from local businesses to local homeowners, until homeowners are paying slightly more than half of all taxes. In 2006, homeowners footed about 45 per cent of the bill.
Sullivan's caucus has already begun the shift. This year, a four-per-cent increase in taxes was collected entirely from homeowners; business taxes did not go up.
The move actually increased homeowners' taxes by eight per cent, since they picked up both their share of the hike and the portion businesses would have paid.
In 2006, there was a one-per-cent shift to homeowners. This year, a further one-per-cent shift would see residential taxes cover 48 per cent of the total tax bill, up from 47 per cent this year.
The move would come on top of a tax hike that could top six per cent, according to staff estimates.
"It's simply too much to ask people to pay," said Vision Vancouver Coun. Raymond Louie. "Mayor Sullivan is squeezing young families, seniors and students out of the city with his tax hikes, and to shift even more of the burden on them is unacceptable."
Sullivan was in New Orleans Friday to speak at a drug conference and could not be reached.
NPA Coun. Peter Ladner, chairman of the finance committee, said yesterday he was likely to support the shift and is "sympathetic to the situation" businesses face.
Ladner called the city's ratio of business to residential taxes "the highest in Canada" and said it was hurting small businesses.
Ladner also said that although he was "curious" to hear from the public, he believed the shift was "generally" a move in the right direction.
cmontgomery@png.canwest.com
For a longer story on the tax debate, visit www.theprovince.com.
WHY SHIFT TAX BURDEN?
A city tax commission set up after businesses complained they were paying too high a share found "little evidence that a major problem exists."
But it also said in September the city's business taxes were "at the high end of what might be considered reasonable" and recommended the city shift one per cent of the tax burden from businesses to homeowners every year until the share dropped to 48 per cent for business.
-- Christina Montgomery |
 |
