Condos for sale in oakville ontario . The independent house with the highest property tax is here! New figures compiled by Pavlov, a professor of finance and real estate at Simon Fraser University, show that independent homeowners in Vancouver pay the highest property tax in the country.
As of June 2019, independent homeowners in Vancouver paid an average of 6235 yuan a year in property tax to the city government, compared with 5376 yuan in Ottawa, 5182 yuan in Toronto, 3753 yuan in Victoria and 3480 yuan in Calgary. This does not include the extra school tax.
In addition, Vancouver increased property tax by 7% in 2020, the second highest rate of increase in the country this year. The Wenzhou government approved the tax increase before the outbreak, which is 7% higher than the inflation rate or three times the average wage growth rate.
Paul Sullivan, managing partner of BCS Real Estate, a property appraisal and consulting firm, said the high property tax and the big tax increase in 2020 highlighted the surge in the Vancouver city’s budget for non-core services.
The so-called municipal core services include police, fire protection, sewage and water infrastructure, garbage collection, street cleaning, snow removal, road and sidewalk maintenance, parks and entertainment places, and public libraries. But the responsibilities of the Vancouver city government now go far beyond the responsibilities of a Canadian city government, including the homeless, social programs for affordable housing and health care plans for the opiate crisis. But these areas are usually the responsibility of provincial and federal governments.
Although Vancouver’s population has grown by only 10% over the past decade, the city’s staff costs have increased by 21% over that period.
Mike Harcourt, a former mayor of Vancouver and governor of British Columbia, mentioned a few days ago that the property tax is designed to pay for core municipal services and responsibilities, rather than supporting federal or provincial responsibilities, such as affordable housing, post-secondary skills training and education.
High business property taxes also make it difficult for small businesses to survive. Before the outbreak, the BC provincial government announced a five-year temporary relief measure to subsidize property taxes for troubled companies and non-profit organizations through municipal governments. However, affected by the epidemic, the business of merchants has become even worse.
