02-11-2021, 02:43 PM
(02-11-2021, 12:25 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: Why a sales tax though? Why doesn't the province just give municipalities a set funding according to some formula, and the province can fund that with whatever.
This is more flexible than tying it to a sales tax, and we can set the formula to achieve whatever ends we wish to achieve.
I originally had the idea around the time the federal government dropped its portion of the HST rate from 7% to 5%. I was thinking the provinces should just create a municipal share out of that 2%.
I’m also fine with other approaches, such as increasing all the marginal income tax rates by some amount and dedicating the new revenue to municipalities.
You may also remember that I’m Mr. Block Grant — I like the idea of the federal government taking some huge amount of money and distributing it per capita, a certain percentage to the provinces, a certain percentage to municipalities, and a certain percentage directly to individuals. This would ensure a certain level of funding for everybody and their sub-federal governments, which should avoid a lot of the problems with things like less well-off areas having worse schools.
Speaking of schools, their funding probably should be moved from property taxes to general provincial funding. Given the way the schools in Ontario are now run, I don’t see the benefit of using property taxes to collect the funds. Anything obvious that can be shifted off of property tax reduces the issues with property tax, even if no other changes are made.