March 20, 2008
Georgia Straight
By Matthew Burrows
Raymond Louie burns Ken Bayne on business taxes
Ken Bayne, the City’s director of financial planning and treasury, told council he will “accept the criticism” from Coun. Raymond Louie that his department has not pushed hard enough to address the fact that small businesses pay the same business tax rate as corporations.
“I’ll accept the criticism and we’ll address the issue,” Bayne said.
Bayne was speaking at the March 13 meeting of the city services and budgets committee, where council voted 6–5 to approve a $23.8-million tax shift from business to residential property owners. The shift was recommended in the report brought forward by the Property Tax Policy Review Commission, which council created in response to lobbying from the Vancouver Fair Tax Coalition.
However, the commission’s mandate did not include looking solely at class six—the business tax category.
“We had asked staff to investigate creating a slightly different formula, or a different way perhaps, to allow the business class to be split into two, to help the small businesses, so that we could perhaps change the tax rates for small businesses,” Louie told the Straight outside the council chambers. “But that has not proceeded under this term. We had asked for that last term and the NPA has done nothing to advance that.…[Fair Tax Coalition cochair] Bob Laurie says there is no such thing as just small business, but clearly there is a difference between the local bakery and Costco.”
Louie grilled Bayne about how hard Bayne had pushed to look at a split within the business class, rather than just burdening homeowners, adding that he was “disappointed” staff had not pushed for it.
“There is not the appetite, either at the B.C. Assessment Authority or at the provincial-government level—which controls the classification system—to try to tackle this class-six issue,” Bayne told council. “I have made representations to the ministry directly…and we have had no positive feedback.”
Louie asked Bayne how many times he or his staff had contacted the provincial government.
“There have been at least a couple,” Bayne said. “I might have to admit that we haven’t pushed the issue hard, but certainly when the government comes back and says, ‘That is not a priority for us,’ that is the message that we take.”
Financial-planning manager Karen Levitt’s report notes that, during the public meetings, “There was general agreement that taxes on small, 1 to 3 person businesses need to be addressed.” |
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