The Budget Debate and The Tax Transfer
I was quoted recently in an article in The Georgia Straight called “Vision Vancouver looks after businesses with tax shift” by Carlito Pablo. In regard to the property tax transfer from businesses to residences, I’m quoted as stating:
“I think it’s a very hard thing for politicians to do this. And I believe that it’s a courageous thing they [Vision and NPA councillors] are doing. I praise them for doing it. I know that COPE is unhappy with them going ahead in doing that. But I personally salute their political courage in continuing. It’s not an easy one to support.
(But) to be a healthy economy, we need jobs. If businesses are paying higher taxes here than anyplace else in Canada, that works against creating jobs.”
Just to be clear, I’m in favour of everyone paying a fair share of their income towards taxes to support the very high standard of governance we benefit from in Vancouver and other Canadian cities. But we should do more to foster small-business entrepreneurialism. One way to help would be looking at local commercial retail property taxes and assessments. Another concern is that the HST is going to have a greater effect on our local restaurants, hair salons and other small service businesses just when the recovery seems to be taking hold.
Small businesses generate 60% of all new jobs yet will bear the brunt of the cost. Larger corporations, on the other hand, will save a great deal with HST implementation and they should be prepared to share the pain as well as the benefits with the many small businesses that are going to be hurt by the automatic 7% rise in their own prices and those of their suppliers.
Having stated all of the above, my conversation with the reporter lasted ten minutes and most of that was spent discussing ways the city could eliminate the projected deficit and preserve core programs. So it was great to see that the Straight also published my Letter to the Editor which covers some of those suggestions:
Sean Bickerton
Fri, 2009-12-04 10:15
Letter To The Editor, Georgia StraightI believe it is possible to continue with the transfer away from small businesses while still maintaining services by cutting the 100 new police officers Mayor Robertson has insisted on hiring at a cost of an extra $12,000,000 annually. As our police force spend 1/3 of their time dealing with mental health issues, why not hire ten social workers at a cost of less than $1 million to have a team on call 24/7 in direct support of the police, freeing them for more urgent priorities.
And, as Peter Ladner suggested, there are $30,000,000 in outstanding fines and bylaw violations, so why not ask the province to stop renewing drivers licenses until all fines are paid, which would eliminate the entire budget gap?
There clearly are other options to cutting our parks, rec centres and libraries, which means these choices are deliberate and I’m terribly disappointed in the choices made
