Vancouver 2010 Residential Tax Increase

When does one step back and ask themselves, what benefit do I get with these increased taxes?

The answer to today’s question is none what so ever!

Vancouver is now facing a 20-million dollar budget deficit coming into 2010. Over 150 layoffs to the city’s workforce is expected, along with closure of the children’s petting zoo at Stanley Park and the Bloedel Conservatory in Queen Elizabeth Park.

To cover the massive shortfall, the mayor of Vancouver’s controversial 2010 budget proposes an increase in residential taxes to offset the impacts of the recession on Vancouver’s business community. Ironically, Mayor Gregor Robertson is a business owner himself, creator of B.C.’s Happy Planet Foods. The move aims to give businesses a tax break in rough times while offsetting operating costs to the public.

Vancouver home owners are expected to shoulder a 4% increase in property taxes while, at the same time, absorbing cuts in public services. Effectively, residential taxes will increase 2%, while business taxes will decrease 2%.

Timing is everything….

The Olympic supporters are quick to pull out their trumpets and applaud the visionary talents of our politicians when beautifully written statistical graphs show herds of black arrows, all pointing up. Pretty pie-charts and elaborate graphs highlighting optimistic trends. All promoting the hundreds of ways BC businesses will benefit from the Olympics and their spending. 2010 was touted as being a record year for local businesses, and now this?

As if the HST wasn’t enough, as if the record high real estate prices are not enough; now we are being punished by giving a tax break to businesses in a year when they are expected to reap record profits. This, of course, is to create new jobs. Specifically, the budget’s aim is to help “small businesses.”

I hate to break out the statistics, but math never lies. How many of us are small business owners? According to BC stats, only 1 in 5, or about 20% of the workforce are self-employed and/or small business owners, or 425000 out of 2.3 million in the workforce.

In reality, this new budget proposal will help the privileged 20%, the 20% who make the most in the first place, and place the burden on the other 80% that work for them. Need I mention the minimum wage in this province is a joke, $8 per hour (the lowest in the country) with arguably the highest cost of living. (5% of the BC workforce earns minimum wage btw). So the next time you pay your abhorrently high property taxes, and your boss leaves you with a stack of papers on his quarterly trip to the Bahamas… think of this article.

And remember, voting is like picking your favorite cancer.