Reforming Ontario’s Property Tax System: A Never-Ending Story?

Enid Slack, Almos Tassonyi and Richard M. Bird ()

No 0706 Classification - JEL: H71, H77, International Tax Program Papers from International Tax Program, Institute for International Business, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

Abstract: This paper reviews the development of property tax policy in the province of Ontario, Canada, over the last two centuries. This review underlines the highly political nature of property tax policy at the local level in the province. Two important realities make the issue highly salient at the provincial level as well. First, since half or more of the property tax collected by any municipality reflects decisions made at higher (regional or provincial) levels of government, and these decisions are often related in no visible or accountable way to matching benefits to the community, one of the key arguments for local property taxation has been – indeed, has always been since at least 1850 – attenuated. Second, many actions of the provincial government, especially since provincial assumption of assessment in 1970 and the explicit linkage of property and provincial income taxes later in that decade, but even more so since a major shift in property tax policy in 1998 have made it clear that it is the province, not the local government, that has both the first and the last say when it comes to property taxes. In Ontario, property tax policy is pre-eminently a provincial rather than a municipal matter not just by law but, and probably more importantly, by repeated provincial assertions of its controlling role with respect to the tax down to all but the very finest details.

Date: 2007

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