Reducing business tax will spur growth: Bowman
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/03/2015 (3332 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Shifting the tax burden from the business community to homeowners is part of Brian Bowman’s long-term strategy to spur growth in Winnipeg.
Bowman said reducing the business tax and exempting more small business operators from paying the tax entirely is a deliberate strategy to ensure the city’s growth – even if it comes at the expense of homeowners who will have to make up the difference.
“A lot of the (budget) decisions are forward-looking, they are investing in how we build a growing, thriving, more modern city,” Bowman said Wednesday. “We need businesses to be able to thrive in this community for Winnipeg and Winnipeggers to succeed.”
The preliminary budget released Tuesday by Bowman has homeowners paying an additional $18.6 million in property taxes in 2015 compared to 2014 ($529.2 million versus $510.6 million), but the city will be collecting $1.3 million less in business taxes ($58.4 million versus $59.7 million).
The business community has long complained that it receives no extra benefits for the business tax. However, that tax was put in place by the city because the province would not allow it to impose a higher tax rate on business properties compared to residential properties, which municipalities in other provinces are allowed to do.
While the Bowman budget proposes an increase of 2.3 per cent for property taxes, the business tax rate will be reduced to 5.6 per cent, from 5.7 per cent; and the cutoff point for eligibility of the small business tax credit increases to $30,000 of rental value, from $23,880.
The cumulative impact of the changes in the business taxes is that 48.6 per cent of all businesses will be exempt from the business tax, up from 41 per cent last year (6,025 businesses will not be paying business tax in 2015, compared to 5,147 who were exempt from the business tax in 2014).
aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca