Comment 35709

By A Smith (anonymous) | Posted November 24, 2009 at 22:45:19

A great way to help the downtown would be to introduce "progressive" property tax rates. Rather than every dollar of assessment being taxed at the same flat tax rate, the city could exempt the first 50k of market value, have a second band at 0.5%, say from 50k to 100k and then have the top rate that everybody paid.

If this went into effect today, a 120k downtown home would go from paying an average tax rate of 1.59% to 0.473%, or from $1,908 to $568. In effect, the city would reward people who bought into low market value neighbourhoods, thus driving up demand for these lower value properties and reducing the present market value differential between the poor and rich areas of the city.

Progressive income tax rates decrease income differences amongst people and progressive property tax rates would do the same for property values.

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