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Originally Posted by sailor734
In fairness the rate is only one part of the equation. Property values matter just as much. Pretty easy to have a low rate somewhere like Toronto where 7 figure condos are the norm.
NB struggles with sparsely populated large (geographically speaking) cities with aging infrastructure and (until recently) very low property values by national standards.
I agree the province needs to do more financially to incentivize development but cities have a role to play too. Do municipalities have to power to grant tax holidays of X years for new residential development?
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Are tax holidays allowed? Because I’ve always felt that tax holidays are a simple solution to promote development that cities in demographic decline, like Saint John, and are something that should have considered ages ago. My assumption is that the archaic provincial tax code doesn’t allow municipalities to do this. Such a tax holiday scheme set in motion decades ago could have promoted more suburban development within the city limits, and probably lessened the huge number of SJ residents that decided to moved out Quispamsis and other bedroom communities.
Personally, I’d love to see a tax holiday implemented on residential high rises 15 storeys or higher. No taxes for five or ten years, as long as the projects are completed within a certain window of time. I think we might all be surprised to see how many projects we could get built in Saint John with that incentive, and it would absolutely be worth it in the long run. If Irving Oil can get what is basically a permanent tax holiday for their tank storage at Mispec, why not try something similar to spur residential development? Again, I suspect the provincial tax code doesn’t allow municipalities to implement tax holidays as such, but that doesn’t mean the tax code can’t be reformed. We’ll just need a change of government, as Higgs and the PC’s have dragged their feet on all of their tax reform promises, and they can’t be trusted to ever actually deliver on tax reform.