by Klaus Rohrich
June 15, 2004
Just when you thought the politicians at Queen's Park had wrung every last cent in revenue out of anemic taxpayers’ pockets, they manage to come up with yet another scam. In their ongoing efforts to ensure that no stone in the Great Tax Hunt is left unturned, Dalton McGuinty’s government is now taxing seasonal trailers in campgrounds in the same manner that homes are taxed. Yes, you read correctly, those cute little trailers that people use in the summer on rented campsites are now being taxed in the same manner as a Rosedale mansion.
It’s the latest rip-off floated by Greg Sorbara and his merry band of bureaucrats to ensure that Ontarians’ standard of living gets on par with that of Haiti. Here’s how it works: if you own a trailer that is parked in one of Ontario’s 1,260 campgrounds and the trailer is at least 8’6" wide or has an added room on the side, it will then be assessed as real property by Ontario’s Municipal Property assessment Corporation (MPaC) and taxed the same way as a house.
But here’s the kicker. The bill doesn’t actually get sent to the owner of the trailer, it gets sent to the owner of the camprground in which the trailer is parked, who is then responsible for paying it, whether he or she is able to collect the tax from the trailer owner or not. You may wonder what’s wrong with this picture. First of all, how can the government legally assess the campground owners for property that they do not own, nor share an interest in? Secondly, doesn’t the owner of the campground already pay property taxes? Third, when one purchases a trailer, the purchase is subject to Provincial Sales Tax (PST). Does this mean that the province is now considering charging PST on the purchase of a home? If not, then how can the province fairly impose a double tax in so blatant a manner? What happens if a trailer owner adamantly refuses to pay the tax? Does it mean the owner of the campground is liable for payment of this tax? Sounds to me like there are a lot of unanswered questions about this hare-brained scheme.
It gets better. Janet Vallery, owner of Highland Pines Campground in Belwood, Ontario says that in her campground, which has 430 campsites, about 50 to 75 trailers move in or out each year. This means that there will be that many appeals each year just in her campground alone. Multiply this by the number of campgrounds in the province and the number of annual appeals could jump to a staggering 63,000 or more. and like everything else this government seems to be doing, they are so desperate to collect this money; no one seems to have considered what the cost of this new tax is going to be.
Janet Vallery took the time and trouble to ascertain the initial cost of the program. at her campground two assessors spent a total of eight days measuring trailers at a salary cost of approximately $3,200. She estimates that if it costs this much to asses one campground, then it will probably cost in excess of $4 million to do all 1260 in Ontario.
What’s more, the data collected in the field then has to be entered into the MPaC data base, which costs God know how much, and if the information changes as it is being entered or is incorrect, then there will be appeals each and every year. How much will 63,000 additional appeals cost MPaC each year and do they have enough staff on hand to deal with this additional number? Most likely not, which means that they’ll have to hire more staff. My guess is that this will be one of those revenue negative taxes on which the government will lose money. But then Dalton’s philosophy seems to be to make sure that citizens keep as little of their money as possible, even if it means the government loses money trying to collect it.
So, the inevitable mathematical outcome of this misadventure is bigger government, more bureaucracy, less net revenue for the government, as well as the businesses affected and a further fleecing of the taxpayers.
But that’s only part of the downside. Here’s the other: trailers are generally owned by families that cannot afford a cottage. This means a lot of people will be unable to afford to pay the "property" tax on their trailers and will subsequently be forced to sell them. There will be fewer people visiting the campgrounds, which will result in industry layoffs. Those layoffs will affect college and university students, as most staff at these seasonal campgrounds are entry-level workers and students. Currently many campground owners in Ontario are earning less in profits than the government is taking in taxes.
Ontario is spending a fortune encouraging tourism. Yet when the tourists arrive they get "rolled" by the taxman. How much sense does that make?
also, this scheme opens a whole range of additional possibilities for Dalton and the boys to put the screws to us. If the criteria for defining a "home" no longer fits the traditional definition, such as a fixed abode, then why not tax cars under the same precept? after all, there are people who sleep and/or eat in their vehicles, so they could reasonably be defined as an abode. What about tents? aren’t tents an abode in every sense of the word? Sure, let’s tax tents as "real property" as people do use them as an abode. One could carry this argument right through to the homeless sleeping in cardboard boxes. Maybe MPaC could conduct an assessment of all the cardboard boxes being used by the homeless in downtown Toronto and then bill the owners of those properties an additional few cents.
Our governments in general, and Dalton McGuinty’s in particular, have managed to outdo the Mafia in terms of revenue generating scams. Seems to me that a change is long overdue.