Toronto's New Taxes: Coming Soon to a City Near You

Ontario taxpayers beware! The City of Toronto is at risk of suffering a giant tax earthquake. If the quake hits, its aftershocks may be felt in other Ontario municipalities. The danger lies in the City of Toronto rushing to exercise new taxing powers granted by the McGuinty government. If taxpayers aren't careful, municipalities all over the province will soon be clamouring for the same powers to impose new taxes.

Armed with the City of Toronto Act passed by the McGuinty government, Toronto Mayor David Miller has issued a list of 'new revenue tools' for council's consideration. This is really a list of new taxes that the city hopes to foist on unsuspecting Torontonians. His list of taxes includes: a new smoking tax; a new beer and wine tax; a new parking tax; a new road toll; a new billboard tax; a new land transfer tax; a new entertainment tax on tickets to things like movies, concerts, plays, and sporting events; a new garbage collection tax; and, a new car and taxi registration tax.

These new taxes will ensure people avoid coming to Toronto and ensure those in Toronto stay at home. Just imagine a night on the town for dinner and a movie - a new tax to drive on the road, a new tax to park, a new tax for a drink, a new tax for a smoke, a new tax on the movie tickets, and the vendors will all charge you more as they pass on the cost of to the consumer for the new garbage taxes. The mayor just wants to tax the fun out of Toronto.

Giving municipalities broad new taxing powers, like Toronto's, will lead to a rapid expansion of taxes in Ontario. This will hurt Ontario's competitiveness, cost jobs, reduce demand for labour and ultimately, weaken our urban areas that are, if anything, in need of an economic renewal.

Some of the tax proposals have the potential to better link payments to the costs of services. Doing so would be a step in the right direction. However, such changes should not be undertaken without simultaneously reducing the property tax burden at the same time. These new taxes are nothing but a flagrant revenue grab unless they are implemented in a manner whereby the impact to the public treasury is neutral.

Many taxpayers are tired of seeing never-ending increases to their taxes from all levels of government while quality of service is down. If politicians put half the effort into prioritizing or finding savings and efficiencies as they do dreaming up new taxing levers, we'd all be better off.

City of Toronto spending is up in 80% of its departments over last year. City wages are rising at twice the rate of the private sector with more than 2,000 city employees earning over $100,000. The politicians take good care of themselves too, voting themselves a 10% pay hike. The mayor has hired more staff and is undergoing a $3 million renovation for his office. No wonder the city needs more tax dollars! And so will every other city in Ontario if this insanity continues.

Mr. McGuinty brazenly broke his promise by imposing the Health Tax. As if that wasn't bad enough he also is raising taxes by giving the Mayor of Toronto new taxing powers. The best way to stop this taxquake is to say no to new taxes in Toronto, for if we don't, a wave of new taxes may soon be washing over all of Ontario.
- Kevin Gaudet, Ontario Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation