“The Province.
Sone \8/ea

The last straw?

| = If Municipar Affairs Minister

Bill Vander Zaim

believes that

| Municipalities Should waive

Penalties against

business

property owners who can't af-
ford to pay their taxes due next
month, he’ll have to do some-

thing about it hims

elf.

; Mr. Vander Zalm will have to
give local governments author-

ity to waive th

e penalties.

Municipalities cannot waive
them now under the Municipal

Act and. Mr.

Vander Zalm

should not tall: ag if theycan. __.
- He appears to be trying to di-

vert the outrage of commercial, -4

and industrial Property owners

hit by staggering
increases away. f

government onto local author-.

property tax
Tom’ his own

ities. Victoria had plenty of
warning of the coming business

$, but it sa

ton its hands,

just as it did with school taxes
and homeowners, These col-
umns warned commercial
property owners in early Febru-
ary what was going to happen to
them this year. But relatively

few of them appe.
sessments.

aled their as-

4

Now many businesses face
crippling tax bills. The huge in-
creases will undoubtedly be the
last straw for Some that are al-
ready buckling financially
under the recession. ,

They are being hit three or
four ways. Victoria cut back its
revenue-sharing grants to local
governments, Non-residential
property values rose faster last
year than home values. Victo-
ria, in effect, reduced the

Proportion of muzicipal taxes.

paid by residential” praperty
owners. In.addition, the new

“ $ehool ‘tax formula: Shifted the

total property tax. burden even
more onto non-residential
Property. Some municipalities
also changed their tax “option’”’
to shift more burden onto non-
residential property. ,
Taxpayers can, of course, put
off paying their bills due next
month. Those who do will Pay a
five or six per cent penalty and
then another one in September
or October if they haven't paid
by then. Under the Present law
their taxes would be in arrears

on Jan. 1, 1983, and they’d pay
interest at 12 per cent. .

This system has been used by

‘some as a relatively cheap loan

from local governments. But
only on Wednesday last week,
Mr. Vander Zalm introduced
legislation to raise the interest
rates and curb this kind of ex-
Ploitation. .

However, if penalties are ta be
waived for businesses in trou-
ble, as Mr. Vander Zalm sug-
gests, they should be waived for
all taxpayers. It would be unfair _
— and very prone to abuse — for--
Victoria or local governments to
excuse some people from paying
a tax penalty and not others.

A more sensible system might
be to require businesses — and
homeowners — to pay in month-
ly or quarterly installments
thereby avoiding a big tax
crunch. And in order to spread
tax burdens relatively even
from year to year, Victoria
should empower local govern-
ments to-vary their mill rates on
different classes-of property.