Dan416
Senior Member
A regional sales tax would be great. I would have no problem if they took back the 2% that the Feds cut from the GST/HST. We'd just be back to paying 15% as we did before.
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New Transit Funding Sources
- Thread starter denfromoakvillemilton
- Start date
Exactly. I never really noticed the cut in terms of my day-to-day expenses anyways.
Also, with a sales tax you'd be getting an extra ~2¢/L from gas on top of the current gas tax.
Electrify
Senior Member
Why not make it an even $74 for the entire province, while using the additional "general" revenue to increase funding towards transit? Regardless of where the money goes though, I've always thought it was asinine that Northern Ontario only pays half the registration fee we pay in the south. Ideally, if you have an Ontario plate, you should pay the same registration fee regardless of where the vehicle is registered in the province. 'Ideally' being a key word here, as I don't have an issue with a REGIONAL increase to pay for transit, or even better, having a higher registration fee for less fuel efficient vehicles regardless of where they are located.
On the topic, I've always thought a great and fair cash grab would be to put a sales tax on food ordered from drive-thrus. They cause cars to idle unnecessarily causing increased air pollution, and I imagine cause restaurant staff extra stress as well. It would encourage people to go into the restaurant, and those which choose not to would be paying a nominal fee for the convenience. Of course, I highly doubt you could single handedly raise all the funds necessary with this fee, but it could be a start.
ShonTron
Moderator
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And depending on who's in government, the definition of "Northern Ontario" changes, sometimes including Parry Sound District and even Muskoka District Municipality. Never mind that parts of Renfrew, Haliburton and Hastings Counties or even Bruce County are as remote as northern Parry Sound District, or the City of Greater Sudbury and North Bay are hardly remote and getting expensive highway twinning projects.
I agree, a regional sales tax of 2% would be great, and dedicated entirely to transit capital expenses. But which region? Just the GTA, or the GTHA, or the GO Transit serviced area? How much worse would it hurt Niagara Region with crossborder shopping? I guess that's what makes gas taxes and vehicle registration fees more appealing.
I agree, a regional sales tax of 2% would be great, and dedicated entirely to transit capital expenses. But which region? Just the GTA, or the GTHA, or the GO Transit serviced area? How much worse would it hurt Niagara Region with crossborder shopping? I guess that's what makes gas taxes and vehicle registration fees more appealing.
BurlOak
Senior Member
Currently, many people in Niagara go across the river to buy gas, so that is similar to the Regional Sales Tax (RST).
I think the best is to transition the RST as you move away from the major population centre. For example, Toronto could be 2%, while Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Markham, Pickering could be 1.5%. The next belt around Toronto (Hamilton-Halton, Caledon, norther York Region, Oshawa-Whitby) could be 1%. Niagara and the next belt would be 0.5%, which is not enough of a factor to have people cross the border. Ottawa and maybe London and K-W could have similar things as well. The funding should be divided not by population but by the origins and destinations of transit trips, so Toronto gets some of the money when people take GO to Toronto or drive and take the subway.
Politically, it seems difficult to implement since there are many close ridings in the belt around Toronto and I am not sure if this idea would appeal to enough voters.
Dan416
Senior Member
I don't think an RST should be different percentages in different places. I mean, if your aim is to cause confusion then sure it'd be great.
I think the people who are travelling across the border now to do groceries will do so regardless of an RST, and those who aren't probably won't care about the RST anyway.
W. K. Lis
Superstar
Isn't there a toll ($3.25) to use the bridges? Unless the tightrope is still there. Then there's the duty on goods if you are only there less than 24 hours. Then there are restrictions on the types of food you can bring back (IE no meat). If you live in the area, you may know what they are, but most of us don't.
I agree. It should be 2% in the GTHA. The only real question is what actually defines the GTHA. It's pretty clear that the eastern and northern edges are Durham and Simcoe Regions, but in the west, do you include Waterloo Region? All of Wellington County or just part of it? Any part of Brant County? How much of Niagara Region?
It becomes a bit dicey. On the one hand, you want to cast a broad enough net that you don't have one part of a city/region with a different tax rate than another (i.e. Guelph with a tax and Kitchener without), but on the other hand you don't really want to include areas that aren't going to see much benefit from it. I'm thinking specifically about places like Brantford. Sure it's in the GTHA, but there aren't exactly any plans to introduce GO service out there any time soon.
CDL.TO
Moderator
The boundaries of the GTHA are well-defined by government. You would have to develop a new term and definition if you're thinking of more than just the six municipalities below:
Electrify
Senior Member
Expand Niagara's 2% RST to the rest of the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area, and have it set at 1% in the Greater Golden Horseshoe (Peterborough, Barrie, Kitchener, etc.). This way someone in Newmarket will be less inclined to drive up to Bradford to save a couple of bucks.
Ok, so I did some number crunching. I took the total GST revenue amount from the 2012 Budget and did some math to figure out that if the GGH extended area is used (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Ontario_GOLDEN_HORSESHOE.svg), it would generate $1.4 billion per year in 2012.
What I then did is broke down the GGH based on the population of each Municipality/Region, and determined what percentage of the total population they are (for instance, Toronto is 29.7% of the total population of the GGH).
What I then did is broke down how much each Region should get based on what their population percentage is. Naturally larger regions have more intense transit needs, so they should get a larger % of the revenue.
The result is this:
There is also a $500 million road toll revenue in this chart, broken down based on the population percentages of JUST the "core area" (since those will be the only municipalities with road tolls).
The result is just over $600 million per year for the City of Toronto. This is permanent, stable dollars that can be used for transit expansion projects.
Of course, any municipal endeavours can be added to this revenue amount (for example if Peel Region wants to add a VRT). But the funding amount on the chart would represent a "base funding amount".
What I then did is broke down the GGH based on the population of each Municipality/Region, and determined what percentage of the total population they are (for instance, Toronto is 29.7% of the total population of the GGH).
What I then did is broke down how much each Region should get based on what their population percentage is. Naturally larger regions have more intense transit needs, so they should get a larger % of the revenue.
The result is this:
There is also a $500 million road toll revenue in this chart, broken down based on the population percentages of JUST the "core area" (since those will be the only municipalities with road tolls).
The result is just over $600 million per year for the City of Toronto. This is permanent, stable dollars that can be used for transit expansion projects.
Of course, any municipal endeavours can be added to this revenue amount (for example if Peel Region wants to add a VRT). But the funding amount on the chart would represent a "base funding amount".
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BurlOak
Senior Member
It looks to me that Toronto would get short changed somewhat. Toronto has many subway projects to build, while the others have no such thing (except maybe York). Even if Peel, Halton, etc. wanted to build many additional LRT lines, they have much more open space and they would have trouble spending the money.
If the money was split based on current transit ridership, Toronto would get a lot more. Maybe adjust every few years based on revised ridership numbers. Or perhaps the GO pot would be larger and GO would also fund the Toronto subway system since that benefits many outside 905 riders while the TTC buses, streetcars and LRT would get money from the local pot.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
looking at that, I almost think that we need a 2% raise. metrolinx needs a way to fund $50 billion in porjects in 25 years, this will only generate around $30 billion.
Using ridership as the metric is an interesting idea. The biggest problem that I see with that though is the areas with low ridership getting only a small amount of money to boost ridership, whereas the areas with already high ridership will get even more money. It's kind of like the have-nots staying have-nots, while the haves become have-mores. At least when you use population as the metric, the municipalities with a large population have the potential to levy additional measures at the local level in order to increase revenues for transit. For example, a VRT in Toronto will raise a heck of a lot more than an equivalent VRT in Halton Region.
And where I think Toronto can make the bulk of their financing revenue is from road tolls, especially if it's administered by Metrolinx, and distributed based on number of highway KMs within a certain municipality. For example, if the 401 from Brock Rd to Mavis, the 427 from the 401 to the QEW, the Gardiner, and the DVP were tolled, the vast percentage of those highway KMs are inside of Toronto. Therefore, most of the revenue would go to Toronto projects.
That is true. But remember, this is just one of many tools that can be used. The way that I see it is the sales tax and road tolls are administered by Metrolinx, providing a constant level of funding from the Province for projects, with the money divided up between projects in various municipalities.
What I then see is municipalities, if they so choose, going above and beyond that funding and instituting things like dedicated property tax increases, vehicle registration taxes, parking levees, etc, in order to generate some additional transit revenue.
I'm sure that those measures, coupled with whatever the Feds choose to put in (especially if they develop a National Transportation Strategy), will generate that extra $20 billion.
And realistically, even if we only get $30 billion over the next 25 years, we'll still be significantly ahead compared to what we've achieved over the previous 25 years.