Don't Move. Land Transfer Tax Passes

The rest will probably come from a fusillade of minor taxes and a meagre property tax increase in my opinion. I am just guessing of course.

I really hope that they consider road tolls and a congestion charge. I am sick of smelling exhaust everywhere I go.

I am glad to hear it, if you can afford to buy a $650,000 home $8725 is a really a pocket change for you at this point. I agree with Ben about tolls, we should have them in the city.

I don't get this. Did anyone really miss going to the library on Sunday's? As for road toll's, sure why not? What's another few dollars on shipping costs when you go to a store? Or going to see friends in Mississauga/Brampton?

i for one will not be voting for miller next mayoral election.

i can't believe they'd bring in taxes like this while at the same time giving themselves a pay raise and not even doing the littlest bit to reduce the expensive perks of council.

Its rather credulous to repeat the Mayor's talking points as a justification. If you are buying a $650,000 house, you are almost certainly financing it, and the tax is payable on closing, so you are looking at $8000 of whatever your downpayment is going to the city. How long does it take you to save $8000?

And to your predictable retort that the LTT won't come from cash on hand, rather will simply increase the size of your mortgage by an equal sum, then it is just more expensive: $8000 x. whatever your financing cost is (currently at least prime +1.5).

And if you are selling a home in the city and then buying a new home in the city, you get it at both ends.

To add to this, the argument that the prov/fed governments should transfer tax revenue to Toronto depends on the premise that we are already overtaxed at those levels relative to revenues that flow down to the city. The Mayor's solution to Toronto residents being overtaxed is to ask for his own tax power so he too can get in on the pillaging. In other words, the Mayor is sucking and blowing at the same time.

As one of his supporters was heard saying: "if the Mayor is not already without clothes, he is doing a striptease".

Finally Toronto is acting like a grown up city and not like a ward of the province that it has been. All cities outside of Canada use multiple means of generating revenue, it is only us that have been hamstringing our urban areas by restricting them to property tax.

Now as to the 200 million hole we still have this:

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/205351

the province is saddling Toronto with 246 million of costs that they should be paying themselves. Getting them to PAY FOR THEIR OWN SERVICES would leave Toronto with some actual extra money to y'know actually improve transit service and the like. Maybe get a head start on that awesome transit city plan. The plan that would get far more areas of the city good transit service and thus drive up demand for condos and houses in those areas. Then we can also start budgeting for the Green city Toronto initatives, waterfront revitilisation and all these amazing INVESTMENTS in the city that would enhance our quality of life and we forget about when the idea of raising the price of 650,000 house to 658,725 (the horror).

With Toronto making use of the extra power the province gave it to get its books balanced we can add more pressure to our MPPs to pay for their own services and not force municipalities to pay for them.

Let's start a letter writing campaign to the province guys, the Ontario budget is coming up and our MPPs need to know where we stand on this.

Toronto taxes are quite reasonable. Try buying a place in New York City. Mortgage tax of about 1.8%, transfer tax of about 1.4%, and a "mansion tax" of 1% for anything over a million (which conveniently was never indexed to inflation, and the average apartment price is now over $1M). But given the city's current high quality of life, it's worth it. If you want a great city, you have to pay for it.

I love hearing car owners whining about a $60 tax (and scheming to cheat their way out of paying it), when TTC commuters are paying an extra $120 per year in metropass costs.

This new tax isn't going to mean an increase in services or revilization of the waterfront. There's still a budget shortfall.

Plus I read a news story that said that a 12% property tax hike would balance the books. Miller said he wants a 3% tax hike so that's a fourth of the hole that we're definetly going to be able to fill in.

That means we're in the hole for 150 million. As long as the province starts paying for its own responsibilities and not forcing all municipalities to do so then we are golden.

Further if the feds are truly serious about green initiatives than public transit service enhancement should be the first thing they invest in. Other countries do it, why can't we?

We don't have much leverage over the feds at the moment unfortunately, but dammit, let's put the Liberal MPPs we elected in Toronto to good use.

I know Anna, that's why I said that all that depends on McGuinty and the Ontario budget now and the 246 million Ontario should be paying that Toronto is right now. We Really need to push our MPPs.

rotenblog: If we are committed to making symbolic gestures, I suggest slaughtering a few lambs on the front steps of Queen's Park. It would do more to get the point across than cutting councillors (already reasonable) salaries.

Adam Vaughan wanted a VRT of $109 (I guess that didn't pass) and Joe Mihevc is "okay with" $150. The difference with the TTC is that that extra $120, Paul, is going to maintain TTC service whereas the roads aren't going to see much if anything of the $60 - and meanwhile 905ers driving downtown don't pay one dime more.

Gimme a downtown parking tax already!
As for scheming to get out of it - the Province of Ontario is going to do very well this year from people renewing their plates for two years, as I have.

The cost of paying off the capital cost induced city debt this year will be $400 million. The total is now $2.2 Billion (http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/243546). That's still the elephant in the room.

If Lastman or Miller had the cojones to keep costs in line earlier and perhaps offer up a small indexed increase in property taxes earlier then we wouldn't be in this mess. People moan on about the province, but the reality is that we could have handled this. City politicians fiddled around rather than dealing with problems of their own making. Lower that debt and we've got more room in our operating budget.

Toronto taxes may appear reasonable to NYC (you forgot their city income tax btw), but NYC is the highest taxing city in North America. Not for me thanks.

You can't ignore the massive dumping of costs that still hasn't been reversed mike, that's when the debt started skyrocketing. The City has been struggling with the provincial payments while also maintaining city services. The Lastman approach was to slowly deplete reserves while city services slowly collapsed and the Miller approach was to quickly deplete reserves while maintaining city services and attempting to improve them (TTC announces stops on buses and subways now for example. That costs extra) and making grand plans for the future (Transit City for example, which is a necessity anyways).

Both options are unsustainable which is why Toronto has been needing 'bailouts' to balance the budget for quite a while now. In any case Toronto had extremely limited options as the city had to get provincial approval for anything and everything.

Which is why The Toronto City Act that Miller achieved in his first tenure is so important. This is the first budget in which that the city has any real authority. Miller's strategy (which I thought was extremely smart) was to use these new powers to raise taxes in July, and then spend August and September campaigning to make the offloaded costs a provincial election issue using the increased Toronto taxes as proof that Toronto is doing its fair share. (Kinda like the One Cent Now that Miller was pushing for the feds).

Unfortunately the taxes got delayed on the idea that the province would ride to the rescue again in the campaign on their own (hah), Miller got real distracted in just trying to get the taxes passed and so he couldn't take part in the provincial campaign, and faith based schools somehow became the only issue worth talking about anyway. Le sigh.

Best Laid Plans aside, we have a chance now to preessure the provincial government on our own before the budget. If the province uses its next budget and surplus to actually start paying for its own services then we will be in a spot to make Toronto better.

The City of Toronto Act is exactly the problem. If your argument is that existing tax revenues from Toronto taxpayers should be paying for city services, and requesting downloading from the prov/feds on that basis, it is completely undermined by an additional tax on those taxpayers. The Province has been steadfast in suggesting exactly this - if you have a funding problem, you have your own tax power to solve it. None of which addresses the problem at the taxpayer level, which is that taxes are disproportionate to services. With the LTT and VRT, the taxpayer is being asked to bridge the city's inability to get the other levels of government to chip in the same taxpayers' money.

Miller's strategy, which was a loser from the start, was to try and fund his spending plans from a combination of new taxes and downloading, because he is ideologically opposed to streamlining of government services, wage restraint in the public sector or even market discipline on pricing of government contracts for services/assets. The LTT and VRT will allow him to continue to spend without a bottom-up program review of the type that allowed the Feds to balance the budget in the 90s and, in the process, become the envy of the rest of the G8 for its sound fiscal management. Sure, the Province will kick in a small amount on the operations side, and a huge amount on the capital side to continue to impress its strategic objectives on the city, but our charlatan Miller's tax and spend philosophy is not consonant with either of the Provincial or Federal governments and won't win him the downloading he needs, which means the taxpayer is left holding the bag.

We need a Mayor with the courage to run a deficit, call the City of Toronto Act what it is - I believe the choice quote from yesterday's proceedings was "the noose the Province gave Toronto to hang itself with" - and refuse to sustain the city's finances through more life support in the form of highly inequitable taxes on the (already acknowledged) overtaxed Toronto taxpayer.

My first argument is that muncipalities in Ontario have been given a bum deal by provincial downloading.

My second argument is that the strategy used upto this point has been to scream at the province while simulatenously begging for help. My contention has that this isn't exactly a sustainable approach and that it is pathetic besides and we're better off doing something to help ourselves.

My third argument is that, good god, let's look at the cities that we're competing with and see how they handle their finances. NONE of them rely just on property taxes and it's far past time we stopped relying on them as well. Toronto needs access to revenue that grows with the economy.

My fourth argument (a new one) is that the feds balanced their budget by dumping their responsibilites on the provinces and Ontario responded by dumping its responsibilites on municipalities. This was a complete crap approach and your second paragraph ignores this fact.

My fifth argument is that Torontonians don't want to give up the services we currently have. Witness the crazed hysteria over no free ice rinks (!). Well if we want 'free' ice rinks then we have to freaking pay for them somehow.

My sixth argument is that we desperately need to invest in this city. Transit City needs cash. And I'm sick and tired of standing around and waiting for a hero to save us.

My seventh argument is that if Torontonians vote for Toronto in provincial and federal budgets then they will be forced to pay attention to us. We didn't do that in the last provincial election, but there's no time to start like the present and we should be forcing the province's hand in their next budget.

Re your second argument, there is less incentive for someone to help you if you have shown you are ready to help yourself. Regardless, we are not helping ourselves: the solution to the overtaxed toronto taxpayer is to tax her again?

third, property taxes grow with the economy. So you already have what you want. Property taxes also have the distinct advantage over the current proposed tax in being progressive by nature and equitable with regard to the tax base as a whole. LTT charges the small% of the population who buy/sell property in a year with the whole of the funding deficit, simply because it is convenient and politically saleable.

fourth, federal transfers to the provinces have never been higher. I agree that the provincial downloading was irresponsible, but no more so than the City's response under the last two administrations.

fifth, your observation isn't empirical - public opinion was not overwhelmingly in favour/against the taxes (and one might add, it appears that the largest support comes from groups who will not shoulder their burden, and their greatest support comes from groups (like CUPE) who will use it to underwrite their standards of living (on the backs on non-unionized workers, mind)). Further, if you are credulous enough to believe that a rational manager (esp. one facing re-election) doing a program review would target the most popular or visible services in making cuts (as oppposed to suggesting cuts - none of which, I note, were accepted implemented by the various committees charged with overseeing their budgets - in order to build the consensus necessary to push through your tax policy), such as ice rinks and the TTC, you deserve the very swindle the Mayor has sold you. There are millions of dollars to be found from, off the top of my head, dismissing dog leash by-law officers, ceasing the purchase of failing cultural institutions with taxpayer dollars for nominal returns, reconstruing one's mayoral mandate to not include enriching union workers in the city (in the case of city workers) and outside the city (in the case of Bombardier workers) with city funds ($150M alone), etc.

Sixth, the LTT will not pay for transit city or any of the mayor's other grandiose spending plans, and is therefore irrelevant to an analysis of the LTT.

Seventh, this appears to have nothing to do with your point at all. I won't address it except to say that it amuses me that people think having the "right" MPs or MPPs will make a difference but disregard the effect of having the "wrong" mayor with a failed strategy. The Mayor of Toronto has far more clout than one or a group of backbench MPs.

x, you say that Harris' downloading of services was equivalent in irresponsibility to Lastman's attempt to make do and Miller's stop-gap approach.

Are you serious? Harris wrought enormous hardship on the poorest people in the province, worsening real matters of poverty and crime... Lastman just tried to act casual, and Miller spent money on police to try to compensate for the impact on our communities of the 'Common Sense Revolution' then sought money from middle class real estate and vehicle owners in order to fund the services they enjoy, like libraries, rinks and pools.

If Miller's behaviour was truly equivalent to Harris', despite being in the opposite direction, then maybe we'd have managed to fix what Harris did to our communities.

It's not, because they're on two different levels. Miller is looking for local solutions to funding problems and draining resources that were under municipal jurisdiction to try to compensate for everything that ought to be funded by the province.

So if these taxes have been voted in, and the previous "no" vote led to the dramatic increase in TTC passes, does this mean we can expect a reduction in transit fares? Ha ha ha *Sob*.

"third, property taxes grow with the economy."

No they don't, as this site explains: http://www.ottawa.ca/city_hall/one_cent_now/index_en.html

"LTT charges the small% of the population who buy/sell property in a year with the whole of the funding deficit, simply because it is convenient and politically saleable."

It is odd to me that there is so much hate for the idea of a municipal land transfer tax and yet the fact that the province has been levying it for decades doesn't even get a mention, where's the sit ins at queen parks to protest this horrible and unfair provincial tax?

The simple reason that the car registration and land transfer tax were the ones that were pushed is that the PROVINCE ALREADY COLLECTS THEM and it is the most cost effective for Toronto to just piggy back off that already existing infrastructure and not have to create its own collection staff. I repeat. THE PROVINCE ALREADY COLLECTS THESE TAXES.

"fourth, federal transfers to the provinces have never been higher."

Which has nothing at all to do with municipalities, which is what I'm talking about.

"I agree that the provincial downloading was irresponsible, but no more so than the City's response under the last two administrations."

I would dispute this. The province and the feds didn't have the mandate to cut services and so they dumped them on the level below them, and the muncipalities were the ones left holding the ball for services Canadians want and the two senior governments were unwilling to pay for.

Again this is affecting all municipalities. Why the hell are property taxes rising ACROSS THE PROVINCE (not just in socialist Miller Toronto) while the feds are cutting tax and the province is in surplus? Answering that question will tell you which levels of government are being irresponsible and which are not.

"fifth, your observation isn't empirical - public opinion was not overwhelmingly in favour/against the taxes"

I wasn't talking about taxes, I was talking about *services*, and the fact that most of the councillors who delayed the taxes also attacked Miller for cutting services speaks volumes about what those councillors know supporting reduced services would do to their re-election prospects.

"Further, if you are credulous"

Let's not make it personal here.

"enough to believe that a rational manager (esp. one facing re-election) doing a program review would target the most popular or visible services in making cuts, such as ice rinks and the TTC"

Free ice rinks are the very definition of friviolous.

TTC services were being cut like crazy during the Lastman years, what's so odd about Miller doing the same thing when faced with a gigantic budget hole to fill? The only difference is that Miller was open about it.

The charge that Toronto has a lot of fat to cut blows my mind. The TTC is an extremely efficient organisation and gets the least amount of tax support of any similar municipal transit system:

http://www.toronto.ca/ttc/pdf/other_transit_properties_chart1.pdf

http://www.toronto.ca/ttc/pdf/other_transit_properties_chart2.pdf

We've been cutting, cutting, cutting in all parts of the city government for the entirety of the Lastman tenure (except for the corruption and the Sheppard subway vanity project that we are still paying for) and we are a lean city because of it, but the fact remains that we are a starved one.

"Sixth, the LTT will not pay for transit city or any of the mayor's other grandiose spending plans, and is therefore irrelevant to an analysis of the LTT."

All municipal taxes go towards all municipal spending plans. A fiscally healthy Toronto will be able to invest in itself and the LTT and VRT make this possible. You're ignoring the fact that all other cities of Toronto's size have access to revenue streams outside of the property tax which DOES NOT grow with the economy. Here is a really great article about this:

http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/Opinion/Editorials/2007/10/23/4597855.html

The LTT and VRT bring transit city closer to reality. And transit city when implemented will increase demand for homes and condos in Toronto.

"The Mayor of Toronto has far more clout than one or a group of backbench MPs."
Not with the Ontario budget coming up he doesn't. And there are plenty of cabinet ministers from Toronto in the McGuinty cabinet. The Mayor can't pressure them nearly as well as Torontians can. We make it clear that we're voting for the city and their precious seats will be in jeapordy on a deadbeat Ontario budget and they'll actaully start advocating for us for a change.

We are voters in this democracy and our voice matters. While we missed the opportunity to make municipal funding an election issue we sure can start now. These taxes were critical and we got them, the next Ontario budget is critical as well and we have to start advocating for it.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071024.COUNCILTAXES24/TPStory/TPNational/Ontario/

And no I don't work for the city :p, I'm just a huge policy wonk.

That's it, I'm moving to Montreal :)

(1) Chris - I said that they were both irresponsible policies, I didn't say they were equivalent.

(2) Aamir. You are playing a shell game.

(a) No they don't, as this site explains: http://www.ottawa.ca/city_hall/one_cent_now/index_en.html

That site doesn't explain anything. And if property taxes don't grow with the economy, I suppose I should object if my assessment is not the same as it was in 1930. Regardless, if the argument is that property taxes are not sufficiently responsible to ebbs and flows in the economy (as opposed to the trend rate), there are certainly ways to reform the property tax to make it more responsive other than bringing in a bad tax.

(b) That the province levies a bad tax does not provide a reasonable justification to encourage the city to get on board. Bad taxes compromise the case for taxation generally. Supporters of public services (I am one) should be the last ones to support bad taxes. The Globe had a good op/ed from the CD Howe institute on the weekend, I think you would enjoy it.

(c) Which has nothing at all to do with municipalities, which is what I'm talking about.

This is disingenuous. Your previous statement was "feds balanced their budget by dumping their responsibilites on the provinces". The Feds balanced the budget through the type of bottom up program review that I am advocating for the city.

(d) "I would dispute this. The province and the feds didn't have the mandate to cut services and so they dumped them on the level below them, and the muncipalities were the ones left holding the ball for services Canadians want and the two senior governments were unwilling to pay for."

This is nonsensical. The Feds had a broad mandate to do a program review and they did just that. The Harris Tories had two consecutive majorities on a platform that screamed "cut services".

(e) "I wasn't talking about taxes, I was talking about *services*, and the fact that most of the councillors who delayed the taxes also attacked Miller for cutting services speaks volumes about what those councillors know supporting reduced services would do to their re-election prospects."

My point was that our charlatan Mayor's targeting of high profile services was exactly to put these councillors (and the public) in a bind. It was an abuse of office, as far as I am concerned.

(f) The charge that Toronto has a lot of fat to cut blows my mind. The TTC is an extremely efficient organisation and gets the least amount of tax support of any similar municipal transit system:

Toronto does not equal the TTC. Neither of us have seen the city's books, but I gave you a few examples of waste and incompetence and I am certain there are more. Spending has skyrocketed under this Mayor and shows no sign of abatement.

(g)"All municipal taxes go towards all municipal spending plans." These don't. They go into the budget hole created by our spendthrift mayor.

"Spending has skyrocketed under this Mayor"

God. Has everyone forgotten the MFP leasing scandal already? All these dingbat councillors like Ootes, Ford and Minnam-Wong were cheerfully oblivious to all manner of financial tomfoolery under Lastman. Now all of a sudden we're supposed to believe they're the careful stewards of Toronto's finances.