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Provincial party leaders on Tuesday are expected to hear a growing call from municipalities to increase sales taxes to help maintain local infrastructure.
Premier Kathleen Wynne, PC Leader Patrick Brown and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath are scheduled to speak at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario’s annual conference at Ottawa’s Shaw Centre, where mayors and councillors from across the province are promoting an idea to implement a one-per-cent provincial sales tax strictly for keeping municipal infrastructure in good working order.
On Monday, AMO president Lynn Dollin told a room of politicians that the organization sees no other option to secure funding outside of municipal property taxes. Raising the HST by one per cent, and transferring the new revenue to municipalities, is the best way to plug an annual $4.9-billion hole in infrastructure needs, she said.
“No matter how you look at it, the scale of the need is greater than the property taxes can keep up with,” Dollin said.
AMO has been floating the sales tax idea among its members in recent months and decided to ramp up a public education campaign to gain support from residents.
The 13-per-cent HST rate in Ontario consists of a five-per-cent federal portion and eight-per-cent provincial portion.
Dollin predicted the provincial party leaders won’t be keen on a sales tax increase, but wondered if they would instead support higher property taxes, municipal service cuts or an alternative idea.
At the same time, it might be a bit naive asking parties to seriously entertain hiking sales taxes less than 10 months before the next provincial election.
For AMO, it’s an opportunity to make a big splash on a new proposal. The 2008 uploading agreement — a deal between municipalities and the province to transfer certain service responsibilities from the cities to Ontario — will be complete in 2018. It has gained little traction on other priorities, such as reforming the arbitration system or limiting policing and firefighting compensation costs.
In Ottawa, the city has estimated it needs to spend nearly $100 million more each year to keep its assets up to snuff. Mayor Jim Watson has opposed the idea of creating a municipal infrastructure levy to relieve the funding pressure, so the money has to come from somewhere.
AMO says it analyzed 44 options to raise revenue for local infrastructure, including additional taxes on booze, vehicle registrations, fuel and tobacco. It concluded the HST increase would be the easiest to implement and fairest way to collect extra revenue.
The organization also thinks the public will be fine with paying more sales taxes if the money is spent on local infrastructure.
AMO hired Nanos Research to conduct random phone surveys, each polling 1,000 Ontario adults, to get their perspectives on a variety of issues, including the idea of increasing the HST to pay for local infrastructure.
The results from a June 2017 survey indicated 54 per cent of people would stand behind a one-per-cent HST increase to support municipal infrastructure and 19 per cent of people would “somewhat” support the increase. Another 20 per cent would oppose the increase and four per cent would “somewhat” oppose it. The remaining three per cent was unsure.
Pollster Nik Nanos warned AMO conference delegates on Monday that people will obviously hate the idea of paying more taxes, but politicians would need to explain that an HST bump is a possible solution that could be supported more than other controversial revenue-generating options.
jwilling@postmedia.com
twitter.com/JonathanWilling
查看原文...
Premier Kathleen Wynne, PC Leader Patrick Brown and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath are scheduled to speak at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario’s annual conference at Ottawa’s Shaw Centre, where mayors and councillors from across the province are promoting an idea to implement a one-per-cent provincial sales tax strictly for keeping municipal infrastructure in good working order.
On Monday, AMO president Lynn Dollin told a room of politicians that the organization sees no other option to secure funding outside of municipal property taxes. Raising the HST by one per cent, and transferring the new revenue to municipalities, is the best way to plug an annual $4.9-billion hole in infrastructure needs, she said.
“No matter how you look at it, the scale of the need is greater than the property taxes can keep up with,” Dollin said.
AMO has been floating the sales tax idea among its members in recent months and decided to ramp up a public education campaign to gain support from residents.
The 13-per-cent HST rate in Ontario consists of a five-per-cent federal portion and eight-per-cent provincial portion.
Dollin predicted the provincial party leaders won’t be keen on a sales tax increase, but wondered if they would instead support higher property taxes, municipal service cuts or an alternative idea.
At the same time, it might be a bit naive asking parties to seriously entertain hiking sales taxes less than 10 months before the next provincial election.
For AMO, it’s an opportunity to make a big splash on a new proposal. The 2008 uploading agreement — a deal between municipalities and the province to transfer certain service responsibilities from the cities to Ontario — will be complete in 2018. It has gained little traction on other priorities, such as reforming the arbitration system or limiting policing and firefighting compensation costs.
In Ottawa, the city has estimated it needs to spend nearly $100 million more each year to keep its assets up to snuff. Mayor Jim Watson has opposed the idea of creating a municipal infrastructure levy to relieve the funding pressure, so the money has to come from somewhere.
AMO says it analyzed 44 options to raise revenue for local infrastructure, including additional taxes on booze, vehicle registrations, fuel and tobacco. It concluded the HST increase would be the easiest to implement and fairest way to collect extra revenue.
The organization also thinks the public will be fine with paying more sales taxes if the money is spent on local infrastructure.
AMO hired Nanos Research to conduct random phone surveys, each polling 1,000 Ontario adults, to get their perspectives on a variety of issues, including the idea of increasing the HST to pay for local infrastructure.
The results from a June 2017 survey indicated 54 per cent of people would stand behind a one-per-cent HST increase to support municipal infrastructure and 19 per cent of people would “somewhat” support the increase. Another 20 per cent would oppose the increase and four per cent would “somewhat” oppose it. The remaining three per cent was unsure.
Pollster Nik Nanos warned AMO conference delegates on Monday that people will obviously hate the idea of paying more taxes, but politicians would need to explain that an HST bump is a possible solution that could be supported more than other controversial revenue-generating options.
jwilling@postmedia.com
twitter.com/JonathanWilling
查看原文...
