Toronto - Can will kill the Golden Goose faster?

Currently, commercial / industrial property taxes, being the highest in North America, have chased away development and jobs, how does the city react?

Lip service.
Despite the cities Enhancing Toronto's Business Plan, which limits increases of property taxes to 1/3 of residential increases, look at the cities response.

During consultations, public opinion was that non-residential taxes should be the same to twice that of residential ones and this should be achieved in 1 to fifteen years. The city decided to reduce rates to 2.5 times over fifteen years. Limiting any increases in taxes to the non residential classes to 1/3 of the residential class.

Once Granted new taxing powers by the City of Toronto Act, the first proposed new tax, the Land Transfer Tax, violates that spirit.


It is also easy to find on the cities own website the common refrain that the city needs to be able to access its entire tax base. What that means is that because the province has deemed the cities non residential tax rates as being nearly four times higher than what is considered fair and limited the amount of increases, they still want to increase them more.

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commend the Province for softening the cap on commercial and industrial property tax rates and ask the Province to provide all municipalities with full access to the entire property tax base;

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The 2002 recommended budget included a potential 4.8 per cent tax increase for 2002 as a result of the provincial requirement that Toronto only apply tax increases to homeowners and not the business tax base. The recommended increase in taxes paid by homeowners would be reduced to 1.7 per cent, less than the rate of inflation, if the City had the ability to look at the commercial/industrial sector when considering an increase in municipal taxes

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This must change. We need the province to bring forward changes to allow us to tax the entire tax base. This modest tax increase must not be solely carried on the backs of seniors and fixed income individuals but must also include the billion dollar multi-national corporations that call Toronto home.

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The province can change Bill 140 and give Toronto access to the entire tax-base, removing the burden of placing any increases solely on the residential
taxpayer."