This week the Municipality of Chester released its budget which saw residential and commercial rates go unchanged, but Warden Allen Webber fears if the proposed provincial tax on non-resident homeowners becomes official rates may need to go up.
“As a council, we are in general opposed to the plan and intend to make sure the province and our residents know our feelings on the matter,” Webber said. “We charge non-residents $1 per $100 assessed and the proposed tax would take it to $3 tripling taxes for those impacted.”
In addition to the proposed rate increase, the province is also looking at implementing a non-resident deed transfer tax which the municipality is also opposed to.
In April, when we first learned of the proposed taxes the Municipality of Chester wrote a letter to Premier Tim Houston outlining their concerns.
In the letter, they say that the province is looking to impose these taxes to make housing more attainable and available, but they don’t feel it will have that effect.
The Municipality reports that they currently send around 1,200 tax bills to addresses outside of Nova Scotia.
If the taxes go ahead Warden Webber fears what it could do to their tax revenues, “These taxes will hurt growth, both in terms of assessment and in construction, which then could compromise future assessments and ultimately could lead to a rate increase for local residents and commercial entities,”.
Webber would like to avoid that as the municipality has been able to maintain commercial rates for the last ten years and residential rates for the last five and they’d like to maintain that as long as possible.
