Chamber urges lower business tax rate

Council to hear pitch on Monday

Kent Smith-Windsor will go before council Monday armed with a new property tax proposal for businesses.

The executive director of the Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce will talk about lowering the commercial mill rate differential compared to the residential rate in advance of the upcoming reassessment for 2013.

He’ll be presenting a new report from the chamber entitled Property Tax Policy that argues for a reduction in the commercial mill rate.

Currently non-residential property owners pay a premium on property taxes of 1.75 times of what residen- tial property owners pay. The chamber wants to see the differential lowered to 1.43 times over the next 16 years.

Smith-Windsor said lowering the rate will foster added growth that will more than offset any lost revenue.

“Given you have commercial and industrial properties paying a premium to residential, if you can grow that base sufficiently to more than offset the discount, you can in fact reduce residential property tax rates as a result of the assessment base growth in the commercial sector,” Smith-Windsor said.

In 2001 the city introduced a plan to reduce the premium from the then 2.42 times residential rates to 1.75 times the rate over a period of 10 years from 2001-10.

“As a result the commercial assessment base per capita in Saskatoon has grown faster than anywhere else in the country by a substantial margin,” he said. “We are looking at means to con- tinue that growth through a secondary set of adjustments to that policy. We are asking for a very extended period of time from 175 per cent premium to 143 per cent premium (over 16 years).”

He said more commercial growth may even mean lower residential property tax rates.

“We will be presenting how (reducing the rate to 1.43 times) will be more than self funding through the commercial and industrial assessment growth that we are trying to foster,” SmithWindsor said. “As a consequence we think we have the potential to save residential property tax payers something that would approach $6 to $20 million over that time through fostering growth in the commercial/industrial base.

“Our focus is going to be on getting the policy right from an assessment and taxation policy that, over time, will actually reduce tax loads for all citizens and all businesses.”