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Ridiculous comments and claims made by City Councillors

Seriously, Councillor Shiner? That's like saying investment banker Joe Rosedale paid $500,000 in income taxes last year, while part-time food court janitor Sally Rexdale paid $1000 in income taxes, so Joe Rosedale is clearly overtaxed.

Idiot.

Also, and I know this is unfair, but I do have a rule of thumb - people who spell the floors of a building as "storey" and "storeys" I assume have a brain in their head, whereas people who use the American spellings of "story" and "stories" (as Shiner did in his chart) I assume do not know what they are talking about when discussing Toronto politics and land use development issues. Suprisingly, this rule of thumb is about 90% accurate. Also, Councillor Shiner, learn the proper usage of hyphens - it's a "two-storey home", not a "two story home".

ETA: Just noticed that Shiner uses both "story" and "storey" in his chart, which means he likely has even less of a clue. In neither case does he use the hyphen in the compound modifier. Also, what is a "two care garage"?
 
Matt Elliot also tweeted a great graph showing the amount of property taxes that Drake pays on his Bridle Path home vs. how much all the other Drakes in all the other cities pay on their mansions.
 
tiffer24 said:
More property tax "alternative facts" from Burnside...

newtwitterav_normal.jpg
Matt Elliott@GraphicMatt
11 mins agoAbsurd display from Coun. Burnside, as he attempts to argue prop taxes aren’t so low if you ignore condos, or only look at two-storey homes.
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Another alternative fact: I heard John Tory on CBC radio this morning proclaiming how this is a budget "we can be proud of".
 
As a percentage of home values, Toronto has low property taxes. However, in real values, Toronto has high property taxes.

Consider a $500k home in an Ottawa suburb vs. a $500k condo in Toronto. Or a $2 million mansion in Northern Ontario vs. a $2 million home in Toronto.

Does it cost more to provide services to a home because it is worth more? Should the taxes on a 2,000sqf home in Toronto be more than an identical home in Ottawa? Why?
 
Well, that's the nature of property taxes. You are taxed on the basis of the theoretical value of your home, not on the consumption of services such a home likely generates. And any increases or decreases in one's property tax usually have more to do with any changes to the theoretical value of your home in relation to changes to theoretical values of other properties throughout the city, than they do with how much Council decides to increase the tax rate in any given year. Finally, and worth noting, any new assessment of your home's theoretical value is revenue neutral for the city - even if property values throughout the city have gone up, City Hall still collects the same amount of money as before.

It is worth noting that the same morons who argue, incorrectly, that Toronto taxes are the highest in the GTA are also largely the same morons who stomp their feet, shout in anger and fling their feces around every time anyone proposes that Toronto decrease its reliance on property taxes by looking at new and/or expanded sources of revenue.
 
In real values, are Toronto property taxes lower than the average in Ontario? Why does the percentage rate matter when you admit yourself that the value of a home has no bearing on the cost to provide services?
 
The percentage rate matters because that's the actual tax rate. The actual amount of taxes paid by any given homeowner has no more relevance to services provided than the tax rate, although at least the tax rate is a product of the city budget, so not sure what you are getting at.
 
I think Freedom is saying that taxes are paid in dollar amounts, and that any analysis of whether those dollar amounts are the right number should focus on the actual amount paid, not the percentage calculation basis. As an example, if the average house in some small rural town is worth $150k, and the average house in Toronto is worth $800k, then it doesn't follow that Torontonians are undertaxed if their mill rate is lower. Of course, this assumes the property tax exists to pay for municipal services. If the real reason for municipal property taxes is redistributive - i.e. to tax wealth - then we should pay the same rate as the rural municipality. For that matter, we already suffer this redistribution to rural areas through the education levy, which is a fixed percentage of market value that goes into a general provincial pot, thereby disadvantaging Toronto taxpayers.
 
pman said:
I think Freedom is saying that taxes are paid in dollar amounts, and that any analysis of whether those dollar amounts are the right number should focus on the actual amount paid, not the percentage calculation basis. As an example, if the average house in some small rural town is worth $150k, and the average house in Toronto is worth $800k, then it doesn't follow that Torontonians are undertaxed if their mill rate is lower. Of course, this assumes the property tax exists to pay for municipal services. If the real reason for municipal property taxes is redistributive - i.e. to tax wealth - then we should pay the same rate as the rural municipality. For that matter, we already suffer this redistribution to rural areas through the education levy, which is a fixed percentage of market value that goes into a general provincial pot, thereby disadvantaging Toronto taxpayers.
Click to expand...

No to all of that, except your last sentence. Going back to Shiner's ludicrous chart, the basis upon which he has "concluded" that Torontonians pay more taxes in actual dollars is to take one form of housing (two-storey, presumably detached, homes with 2.5 bathrooms and - wait for this - two-car garages), a housing form that is significantly less common as a percentage of overall housing in Toronto than in surrounding GTA municipalities, and which is sufficiently uncommon in "Toronto (South)" (his words) that it is priced at a huge premium compared to other forms of housing. And just to really distort the results, he included the education tax component. On the basis of that one form of housing, Shiner says that the actual dollar amounts in Toronto are generally higher than elsewhere. Despite the ridiculous parameters of his chart, so what? All that shows is that people with really expensive houses are paying more taxes in actual dollars than people with less expensive homes - that's also true in Oakville, Burlington, Uxbridge, etc., and all of those people are likely also paying more in other forms of taxes. Go back to my comparison of Joe Rosedale versus Sally Rexdale as to why actual dollars paid isn't a particularly insightful way to be comparing tax burdens. Compare a $1,000,000 dwelling to another $1,000,000 dwelling (apples to apples), and then compare dollars paid. Yes, a $1,000,000 dwelling in Toronto likely differs from a $1,000,000 dwelling in Pickering, but that's the fucking point - the latter dwelling is in Pickering! One can't just compare the homes without looking at the entire context and the whole range of trade-offs.

I agree completely with your last sentence, though.
 
Nobody has made an argument on why tax rates should be based on a percentage of property value. If housing prices double in Toronto next year, are Toronto homeowners being undertaxed because the mill rate is that much lower now? If house prices fall by 90% next year, are Toronto homeowners now way overtaxed because the mill rate is sky-high?
 
pman said:
If the real reason for municipal property taxes is redistributive - i.e. to tax wealth - then we should pay the same rate as the rural municipality.
Click to expand...
Yeah, you don't want to do that. When I lived in a rural area, where my house's market value was 1/3 of where I live in Toronto, I paid more in terms of actual dollars (and that was 10 years ago) than I do now, and I didn't get anywhere near the services I get in Toronto.
 
PinkLucy said:
Yeah, you don't want to do that. When I lived in a rural area, where my house's market value was 1/3 of where I live in Toronto, I paid more in terms of actual dollars (and that was 10 years ago) than I do now, and I didn't get anywhere near the services I get in Toronto.
Click to expand...
Now that I've retired I've been looking at prices outside the city. A condo in Ajax valued at around 1/3 of the value of my Toronto house would cost me $100. more per month for taxes. We get a lot of services for our money here in Toronto, and it's time people realized it. There isn't any meat, let alone gravy left to cut. We're falling behind and it shows.
 
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