A progressive business levy beats any tax shift

Tell small-business owners that the property-tax shift will benefit their bottom line [“Vision keeping NPA tax shift”, October 21-28]. When this issue last came up, I spoke to some small-business owners and was told most did not own their property. They laughed when I mentioned a reduction in taxes and said it was most unlikely that the landlord would ever pass any tax reduction down to the small-business tenants.

Leases can last several years, and renegotiation is usually the landlord jacking up the rent with a “take it or leave it” attitude—or the landlord wants to demolish the building and replace it with a new structure: condominiums on top and high-end retail below, with attendant higher rents.

A better approach for the city to take would be to create three categories for commercial-property taxation: one for small business, one for medium-sized businesses (small chains), and one for large businesses (head offices, banks). Right now, a small independent coffeehouse pays the same rate of tax as the head office of a large corporation.

A careful redistribution of the current commercial tax rate among these three new categories would keep the residential property tax separate, and would likely give small businesses a break.

> Blair Petrie / Vancouver

Comments

1 Comments

Bruno15

Oct 28, 2010 at 5:30am

Being a commercial landlord, I can tell you that virtually all commercial leases are done on a "net" basis, where the costs of the landlord associated with a specific property are directly passed on to the tenant, especially property taxes. To say the tenant gets no benefit of reduced property taxes it at best idiotic and at worst, a flat out lie.

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