Comments

Regina Corporations Continue to Get Tax Written by Jim Elliott on 2006-11-27 13:46:57 On Monday, November 20th, the new City Council is likely to approve giving a five year tax exemption to Borealis Retail Cornwall Centre Inc. for their parkade space at the Cornwall Centre and the Sears Parkade (2006-70 www.regina.ca/meetings.php3 ). This would amounts to $903,901 a year (based on 2006 tax projections). The City’s share would be $421,291. Approximately $438, 735 would be taken from the School Board’s budgeted revenue stream and $43,875 would continue to be no longer available to the Library Board.   This has been going on for 15 years. The council has been renewing the exemption in five-year allotments. If one was to add up the lost revenue, based on 2006 tax projections, this would be $13.56 Million dollars not received over the past 15 years. This also means that those same three bodies, City of Regina, Public & Separate School Boards and the RPL Board will not receive $4.51 Million dollars over the next five years.  If any of the taxing bodies wished to maintain the same dollar level of funding for the taxpayers of Regina, they would be obligated to increase our taxes over those same 20 years. Over the past 16 years, we have seen 5 zero mill rate increases, 7 years with increases of less than 2% and only 4 over 2% (2.76%, 3.8% 4.33% and 4.1%). The annual increase in Consumer Price Index has average 2.76% over those same sixteen years.  Three years ago on December 12, 2003, the City Council provided Cadillac Fairview, the owners of the Cornwall Centre, and Startek a five-year tax exemption for the property used by Startek. This amounted to approximately $200,000 dollars a year staying in the hands of the corporation’s shareholders and not in the hands of the city to fix roads, clear snow or other city services.  The business community continues to get tax breaks while residential taxpayers continue to pay a greater percentage of the tax load of this community. It used to be 50/50. Residential taxpayers now pay close to 60%.   Commercial housing corporations received a tax break last year reducing their tax burden by$4.9 Million dollars each year transfering that tax burden onto Residential taxpayers. The tenants of those rental properties still haven't seen the reduction in rent as promised by the business owners.

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment 2.0!