Perhaps there’s nothing more quintessentially Fordian than our mayor’s recent determination to eliminate, or at least clip, the land transfer tax without proposing any alternative source of money– and this despite the provincial Liberal’s removal of $150-million from city coffers. Ford was justifiably fuming after learning that this money is gone but claims to have been “blindsided” by it, suggesting he has no contact with the office directly above him concerning the most vital issues. This would be shocking, if it was at all surprising. Maybe he was engaged on the telephone with a citizen whose cat was stuck in a tree, or perhaps, as the Toronto Star pointed out, his mind was occupied the day Provincial Budget Chief Charles Sousa claims to have called his office twice because this was the same day that the massive police operation Project Traveller unfolded. But everyone beats up on our mayor and it’s easy, even if reasonable. I will play devil’s advocate and describe exactly what is bad about the land transfer tax he hates.
Proponents of the MLTT (municipal land transfer tax) point out that Toronto has become dependent on it. In other words, this tax generates money and the city needs money. It is a truth universally acknowledged that all municipal governments are in want of money, and that collecting money is the key to amassing money. The City Manager’s report states that the MLTT raised $344.5-million in 2012. Ford is looking to either eliminate 10% of this, $34-million, or tweak it in other ways so as to allow citizens to possess more of their money by depriving the city of it.
For good reason, people react strongly to taxes on their home and hearth. It’s not like a tax on cigarettes, a personal choice that burdens healthcare. People generally understand these types of taxes (though their justification falls apart if it turns out non-smokers who do yoga and live over 100 years constitute a bigger healthcare burden than civic minded citizens who die at 50-something). Even the unpopular vehicle registration tax–which Ford immediately and gleefully eliminated, but never replaced its revenue–at least targeted the source of traffic congestion and those who contribute to road damage, which the city pays heaps to repair annually. You may disagree with the tax, but there’s a plausible connection between the tax imposed and the burden car drivers put on the city.
No such connection exists for people guilty of merely owning homes. Healthy societies need home owners, and such people shouldn’t be punished. Canadians aren’t like Americans, the country founded on a violent tax revolt that generally views every tax as an affront to their liberty. But not even Canadians like paying taxes the way we might like baseball or ice cream, just that some taxes are essential and we get that. But if a new tax is created solely because the government needs more money, new taxes will never end. Presumably this is Ford’s objection.
The huge irony here is the city needs more money because it’s combatting the legacy of the Harris Conservatives, which included in its membership Rob’s late father, Doug Senior. I wonder what a conversation between them today would sound like. Toronto doesn’t need money because its government is decadent or spends frivolously or is cripplingly inefficient. It’s that huge amounts of tax dollars that used to go to the city are collected and summarily squandered at provincial and federal levels. If Toronto needs unjustifiable taxes to stay afloat, it’s because it’s largely been put into an unjustifiable position.
But Ford doesn’t get this, and his behaviour has nothing to do with this. Ford is in campaign mode after emerging from the crack scandal with a new, younger and politically inexperienced staff. He suffered a high-profile defeat on the casino file and elsewhere, and has been totally castrated in council. Centre councillors and former allies shuffled away a long time ago. His defeats have been so resounding, his image so tarnished here and even abroad, that he has completely abandoned everything he stands for, going as far as to support gay Pride.
So fighting the municipal land transfer tax offers him a chance to make good on a 2010 election promise that he can say without being totally off base is unjust. Just because the MLTT has become an entrenched and necessary part of the city’s budget, and it has, doesn’t mean it was a justifiable tax to create at the time. Presumably there were other taxing options that brought in the same money that could be marketed to citizens more palatably, without that gouging optic (it’s the optic that’s key: any tax that brings in the same money is equally gouging, it’s just presentation can make it more readily acceptable). Best is not needing an arbitrary tax because the various levels of government work well in tandem, but this is asking a lot.
So while Ford isn’t totally wrong to object to the nature of the MLTT, he’s had a long time to conceive of a way to eliminate it and offer a counter proposal. Currently no such plan exists. All he’s done is whine and blame others. Some turn around. But there are changes. His Twitter feed is now written by a mildly literate university grad, and after years of resistance he’s finally succumbed to attending a gay pride event, a no-brainer appearance for any politician except for maybe a Republican. But his failure to take any responsibility for the financial obstacles in his path paired with an economic plan consisting wholly of cuts shows that the main things never change.
CORRECTION: Previously this article stated that the MLTT doesn’t apply to first-time home buyers, but this isn’t quite true. They do need to pay the tax, but a smaller amount, as they qualify for a rebate of up to $3,725.00. We regret the error.
————
Jeff Halperin is a Toronto-based writer. You can follow him on Twitter @JDhalperin.
For more, follow us on Twitter @TorontoStandard and subscribe to our newsletter.
