It’s a sad fact that after years of little or no increases, property taxes in Penticton are now scheduled for a big jump.
The jump is needed, so city hall says, so they can start to catch up on the structural deficit, deferred roadwork and other items that have built up over the last five years.
According to Colin Fisher, the city’s chief financial officer, the planned 5.5 per cent increase in the city’s tax requirement will cost an average homeowner another $76 per year.
But in an effort to make the increase seem even more palatable, discussion around the city council table turned to expressing that in equivalent items, with one councillor saying his personal property taxes would increase the equivalent of four coffees per month.
Like most arguments that try to reduce a concept to the absurd, there are a few problems with looking at a tax increase this way, starting with what that would mean in the real world to Penticton coffee outlets.
If we multiply the coffee claim by the roughly 14,000 residential properties in the city, that’s 672,000 less cups of coffee sold. Luckily for the various coffee dealers, most of us are so addicted to our daily caffeine fix they are probably safe from a sudden tax increase-induced reduction in sales.
That $76 could also be looked at in terms of other luxury items. For example, it’s about a quarter of the cost of a new iPad mini, or half the cost of a Samsung equivalent. It’s roughly the cost of six large pizzas.
It’s also the cost of two pairs of children’s shoes.
The increase in taxes may be necessary, but let’s not shrug it off by trying to diminish its impact. Some taxpayers aren’t even going to notice the increase, but at the other end of the spectrum, there are families where that $76 a year is going to mean less necessities, not less luxuries.