City of Powell River Council passed six bylaws providing for permissive tax exemptions for 79 applications from community organizations in the city.
At a special council meeting on October 28, councillors unanimously carried the six bylaws, which caps the permissive tax exemptions at $400,000. If council was to provide 100 per cent exemptions for all the applications for the 2022 tax year, the figure would be $430,109. Council had a deadline of October 31 to pass the bylaws.
Permissive tax exemption applications come from community organizations, such as sports facilities, places of worship and nonprofit organizations, to forgive the taxes on properties they are occupying.
At the special council meeting, councillor George Doubt, chair of the city’s finance committee, said this year’s permissive tax exemption allocations were a change from what the city has done in previous years.
“Rather than granting 100 per cent tax exemptions to all of the eligible bodies that have applied this year, we are providing a permissive tax exemption of 95.1 per cent to all of those organizations,” said Doubt. “The effect of that will be limiting the total dollar value of permissive tax exemptions for 2022 to $400,000. That’s slightly higher than it was in 2020 and lower than it would have been if we had provided a 100 per cent tax exemption [in 2022].
“The effect on that is that all of these permissive tax exemptions would have forgiven those bodies of paying their taxes. Those taxes would be shared among all of the other taxpayers, therefore adding to their tax burden.”
Doubt said this will make some significant changes to the budget for next year and to individuals’ home taxation. He said the bylaws will cap the total dollar amount of permissive tax exemptions for 2022.
“Council is committed to look at financial needs tests and categorizing different categories of permissive tax exemptions in future tax years,” said Doubt. “It’s all part of a plan to deal with these permissive tax exemptions in a staged way.”
