Vancouver City Council Stands Up to Provincial Taxes

In the October 2018 municipal election, Vancouver not only elected a new mayor – they elected an entirely new council and new approach to governing the city. After ten years of a secure hold on power, Vision Vancouver no longer has a presence in the current government. We’re being led by an independent mayor for the first time in thirty years, and the new council seems poised to protect Vancouver’s interests more strongly than before.

Case in point: the NDP’s controversial new school tax hike. Starting in 2019, high value homes will pay an additional 0.2% tax rate on the residential portion assessed between $3 million and $4 million, and an additional 0.4% of the residential portion assessed over $4 million. Although the tax is set by the province, it’s collected by the municipality, leading to fears that Vancouver residents will see it as part of their property tax bill and revolt against the property tax increase of 4.9% for 2019.

Whatever the motivation, the new council is to be commended for approving a motion to oppose the new surcharge. Introduced by new NPA councillor Rebecca Bligh, the motion points out that the surcharge is not based on the ability to pay, does not allow for deferrals for people with rentals or certain levels of debt financing, and that the same amount of expected revenue could be raised by a 0.25% increase applied to the top income tax bracket in the province.

New mayor Kennedy Stewart, who voted against the motion, nevertheless sent the letter opposing the surcharge to the provincial government as directed by council.

Finance Minister Carole James counters the opposition to the bill by saying that if you are on a fixed income, you have the ability to defer your taxes until you sell your home. But that didn’t stop furious Point Grey residents from forcing Attorney General and MLA David Eby from shutting down a proposed town hall about the school tax over ‘security concerns’.

Daniel Greenhalgh, ENM’s co-founder, believes the perception that high-value homeowners are a justifiable target for tax increases is misguided. “Just because you own a home doesn’t mean you have the liquidity to subsidize the province’s every need. These kinds of tax increases, which are piling up year after year, are forcing a people to sell their homes because they can’t keep up with them. It’s one thing to increase taxes on high-income brackets, but this applies to all homeowners, many of whom are on fixed incomes and can’t afford this. To ask people to sell their homes to cover taxes is absurd.”

It’s encouraging that our council members from the Non-Partisan Association are working with Green Party councilors to stand up to unsustainable burdens on Vancouver’s tax base.