How much does CN pay in taxes?

With Harper lowering corporate tax rates from 35% to 17%, it would seem that corporations would be the likely target for tax hikes. Funny how KPMG didn’t look at that possibility.

“With Harper lowering corporate tax rates from 35% to 17%, it would seem that corporations would be the likely target for tax hikes. Funny how KPMG didn’t look at that possibility. “

Huh? Since when did corporate taxes become a core service?

“When it comes to sports fields and parks, Prince George is the only one in BC that the consultant looked at to offer not-for-profit youth users the use of fields at no charge.”

Sweetheart deals like this are breaking taxpayers and increasing city debt. I know people hate increasing user fees, but the reality is that we cannot continue on the same path without doing so. It isn’t sustainable.

Along with selling real estate and increasing user fees, it’s also time to cut the fat at City Hall itself. Wasteful spending and staffing levels also need to be looked at closely.

“When it comes to sports fields and parks, Prince George is the only one in BC that the consultant looked at to offer not-for-profit youth users the use of fields at no charge. The cost of asset management and maintenance of the local fields and parks is approximately $3-million dollars for 2012, while forecast revenues is just under $21-thousand dollars. This represents a cost recovery rate of a miniscule 0.7-percent”

Sports fields and PARKS???? Do they mean “real” parks? If so, then of course the cost recovery rate looks minuscule when included in the denominator are amounts that nobody in their right mind would normally include. How do they propose getting around that? Setting up a gate at Fort George Park, Cottonwood Island, Connaught Hill, Moore’s Meadow or Rainbow Park and charging admission?

The other thing missing here is what sort of price increases would be needed to have a material impact on the subsidy levels. They need to publish the anticipated usage volumes to figure that one out and to run various scenario’s. Without that, this analysis is somewhat meaningless. They can say that the subsidy needs to be reduced by XYZ but if it means a 1000% increase in the cost to the end user, it’s never going to fly. If they can achieve it with a 5% to 10% increase in prices, then maybe it is more acceptable.

One thing does appear certain and that is that all of the complaining by hockey players in PG doesn’t seem to be justified ;)

NMG: “One thing does appear certain and that is that all of the complaining by hockey players in PG doesn’t seem to be justified “

I agree with you. I’m a rec hockey player and I am sickened by the whining and know that players in other cities pay a lot more and have worse ice times. We, like other groups have to start paying more of the fair share.

JohnnyBelt, I agree that wasteful spending and staffing levels need to be looked. How about cutting some training programs to staff? I wonder how much the City spends every year sending every Tom, Dick and Harry to a training program whether they need it or not.

I don’t think some of the lower levels of staff need as much training as they get (e.g. clerical, janitoral, etc.).

They missed the biggest opportunity … to hire a management company to manage and operate the entire City, including the function of the City Council.

In case people are not aware, Portland Oregon votes in city commissioners who all get paid in the low $100,000 range (I think there are 4 or 5 in total, including the Mayor) and each is in charge of a number of departments.

Time we get rid of Councillors who just pontificate and move them to becoming responsible for doing as they say or get voted out the next time.

BTW, that system does away with the City Manager position very nicely.

Of course we would have to lobby to get the province to step into the “conversation” and change the Act to allow that type of City governance.

I could not think of a better time to do that. We not only have the firement protecting their status quo, we have every single person at City Hall protecting the status quo, including Council and Mayor. They all suffer from being humans resulting in a self preservation instinct.

Even KPMG does not think outside the box. In fact, as we are learning, far from it.

I really love these kind of nonesensical statements – “When it comes to sports fields and parks, Prince George is the only one in BC that the consultant looked at to offer not-for-profit youth users the use of fields at no charge. The cost of asset management and maintenance of the local fields and parks is approximately $3-million dollars”

NOT!!!!

Mixing apples and oranges.

We are talking about user fees for fields, not fields AND parks.

So give us the figure for maintaining fields.

For instance, the lawn bowling green. A nice and simple one. A larger version would be the soccer fields on 15th.

Break out the cost of maintaining each one over a 10 year period and figure out how much to charge if the City was going to try ot recover 10% or 20%. Then look at how that will be accepted by the users and their sponsors and how many users one may lose as a reult of implementing such fees.

I mean, take this exercise through to its conclusion. Anyone can come up with ideas ….. defending them and looking at consequences f actios is the difficult part. I would have though KPMG would have done at least some of that work as samplers to show the City how it is done.

BUT, I think I was giving KPMG too much credit for their ability. They simply do not have it!!!!

You poor deluded Harperites, you have been “Conned” so hard you no longer can see the forest for the trees. Corporations now run the show in Canada, and pay so little in taxes.

Why is it that Alberta will run a $3 billion deficit this year, and still has an atrocious infrastructure that relies on a single lane “highway of death” to access Fort Mac (where very few want to live) and the oilsands? Why do you think that foreign companies are lining up to purchase Canadian assets?

Do you really think taxing hockey and soccer players will balance PG’s books? If you do, you are living in a neocon dreamworld, and Harper would love you to keep dreaming.

Stop being cows that keep being milked, and see who is benefiting from the status quo. Corporations, are taxed half of what they used to, and are sitting on piles of idle cash, according to the Bank of Canada.
Time for them to ante up, and help make Prince George a desirable place to live.

Herbster, not sure where you get your info from. The Federal corporate tax rate for general corporations is 15%, and then the province of B.C. adds on 10% for a combined rate of 25% of taxable income. Alberta is the same.

And FYI – corporations don’t actually pay any tax at all. Their shareholders do. The way the system works, is the corporation earns $100.00, and sends the government $25.00, keeps $75.00. Then, if the corporation pays the $75.00 dividend to the shareholder (if they are an individual), the shareholder gets a tax credit for the $25.00 the corporation paid to the government. So corporate taxes are prepayments of the shareholders taxes to the government.

The public policy of lowering corporate taxes, is the belief that the more cash flow a corporation retains, the more it is able to invest and grow and provide jobs. If a corporation does not use those funds for that purpose, then they sit in a bank account somewhere until the shareholders vote in a board that pays them out in dividends.

Now, you may think this evil. But, if a corporation wants to build a million dollar building in Prince George, it has to make $1.333 million to pay cash. The government then allows them to right off 4% a year of the cost of that building.

So the higher corporate taxes go, the less they have to grow. And the irony of all this, is the people who scream the loudest for increases in corporate taxes, actually receive their pension income from pension plans who are shareholders in the self same corporations.

And if corporations are sitting on piles of cash, that cash has already been lent out by the banks to corporations who don’t have piles of cash and are trying to grow, or to homeowners, or to city’s like ours. Cash doesn’t sit anywhere, it get’s lent right back out again.

I never claimed that corporations are evil. Merely that they are not paying their share. Municipal infrastructure should be considered a cost of doing business. They use roads, use electricity, pollute the air, etc. Helping pay for swimming pools, soccer fields, and hockey rinks is the least they can do.

“Statistics Canada numbers show Canadian non-financial corporations with a cash hoard of $526-billion at the end of the first quarter of 2012, an increase of 43 per cent since the recession ended in 2009.”

“Mr. Carney suggested that with hundreds of billions of dollars in their bank accounts, Canadian firms aren’t doing enough to drive economic growth and create new jobs.”

Well, helping pay for a few municipal workers might be a start!

User fees vs economic benefit. Up the fees maybe equals less use which equates to less sports gear being bought. Possibly less use of restaurants, corner stores enroute to and from these venues. May also relate to more people, youngsters sitting infront of tube instead of being active.

Ferry rates being raised, what’s the economic risk from less travelers.

Anyhow how much are economic spinoffs looked at?

I would take it there are communities elsewhere is much cheaper, so they wouldnt use that in their justification.

The city is loosing money hand over fist on operating the rinks. I don’t know how private rinks ever survive.

Pools cost $2,700,000.00 Parks costs $3,000,000.00, Rink costs 2,100,000.00 The library and Art Gallery, they would likely costs $2,000,000.00.

That is close to $10,000,000 a year. So lets see, I dont go to the pool, play hockey, play soccer, go to the library nor look at pictures on wall. And I am paying an additional $500.00 a year on my tax bill to pay for this. Why not reduce our taxes and throw it on the users.

If Mom and Dad wants to take the kid too the pool, pay the rate. If Mom and Dad wants to take the kid to Soccer, pay the rate. Same for the people that wants to play Hockey, pay the rate.

Traditional Library in the 21st century. If you poll a 100 people in the mall, and ask them how many time they have used the library, I will be very surprised to see any more than 15% of the population. why do we need a 40,000 sf building to hold books that can be found on the internet.
Reinvent yourself, join the 21st century. Your entire operation can be done out of a 10,000 sf space, good internet connections, a few thousand books, a drop in center for the kids to learn what books are, and thats about it. It could all be done in a annex in a town hall set up. The world is changing, let go of it.

He spoke, I agree with your points about the Library. I suggested sort of the same thing once, and people jumped all over me… mostly traditionalists and techno-phobes who couldn’t get past the idea the world has changed.

Facilities like the Library need to change with the times, and they have not done so, outside of opening a little room with a few computers with internet access.

“So lets see, I dont go to the pool, play hockey, play soccer, go to the library nor look at pictures on wall. And I am paying an additional $500.00 a year on my tax bill to pay for this. Why not reduce our taxes and throw it on the users.”

Yup great plan – while you are at it maybe you can send the province a cheque to pay for any schooling you or or kids have received. Oh, and if you get sick please do not use BC Medical as that would be unfair for me to pay for your illness. Just cut a cheque for that too :)

So He Spoke in your world all families can afford the full cost, interesting.

Howcome taxpayer money goes into private schools? Do private schools take in special needs or just pawn them off to the public schools?

Hmmmm! Seamutt, my experience was quite the opposite. The public school was not willing to help provide what our child needed. But, the private school did an amazing job. And, we paid extra for it, besides paying for the public education for everyone else too.

It is all about making choices and setting priorities. Is it a good idea to subsidize beer league ice time to the tune of 43% while city owned bridges are looking for $600K for maintenance in 2012- currently unfunded.

Shear strengthening of the girders on Foothills bridge is a project the began in 2006 and is still only 1/4 complete. Are we going to put this off till they start dropping like in Montreal?

Nothing wrong with discounting the rate for kids but all adult leagues should pay the full tab.

No offense intended He spoke, but that model is simply unrealistic and goes entirely against the concept of community. There likely isn’t a single person in Prince George or any other city for that matter, that doesn’t rely on SOMETHING that they utilize being subsidized.

It could be an ice rink, a park, a sidewalk, bus service, a ball diamond, a trail, a boat launch or pretty much anything else that the private sector could NEVER make money operating. These things are all valuable to a city and to suggest that users should pay the full cost for all of them is simply not realistic.

What isn’t unreasonable (and in fact it should be a given), IMHO, is for a city to have a firm handle on what services it desires to offer and to have a solid plan in place for how those services can be offered to the taxpayer for a reasonable cost.

There is also a difference between “required” services and “optional” services. That line also gets blurred depending on the makeup of the community, what it sees as a priority, its demographics, etc. One only needs to look at a facility like a PAC to see the point I’m making there.

I think there is also a difference between how “liveable” a city is and the amount people are willing to pay to make it “liveable”. One only has to travel around the country to see that there are OBVIOUS differences between communities, how they enrich them, the services they provide to their citizens, etc. It’s not necessarily even city size. There are some very small cities that provide a high level of services to their citizens and then there are larger cities that don’t. It comes down to choice and what people are willing to pay for.

At the end of the day, if PG residents want a low cost, no frills city, then as elected officials, council should deliver that. My own personal opinion is that this is not a recipe for success or growth.

Repairs to damaged stucco on the east wall of the Aquatic Center $66k 2012 capital plans currently Unfunded

Four Seasons Pool $75k Roof repairs currently Unfunded

….wonder if this is how the current cop shop got into such a state that is is beyond repair.

Some of the responses confirm some people’s belief that taxes should be kept low, as long as services aren’t cut.

It would be nice if we could maintain everything to its current standard, but taxpayers have spoken that they can’t afford it.

Publicly funded and subsidized facilities have grown past the point of sustainability. Welcome to reality.

I do agree with user fees and increasing them. Nothing wrong with asking the people who use the facilities or services to help pay for them. It is unfair to dump 100% of the cost of these things only on the tax payers. Every one should contribute their fair share. Otherwise, the burden becomes too much for the ones left to pay the bills.

I have to laugh at the people that say we pay too much in property taxes in this town. Didn’t I see a report saying that about 1/3 of the City residents pay only about $1,000 per year in property taxes……..wow how much lower can they get?

I think people forget that we get a lot of different services for our taxes….water, sewer, roads, schools, rcmp, sidewalks, street lights, firefighters CN centre pools and ice rinks etc etc.

Even if some of the commenters say they don’t use some of the services such as the pool or the library, I’ll bet you might really use another service so overall it still makes sense.

People have to remember that we are a community and we all pay into the system. If you have a lot of property or a really nice house then you can pay some more. It’s a fair system.

Sure it’s never going to be perfect. But we could always have that American system where the rich people in power make the rules and make the joe working class pay for the system. I for one do not want to be too much like an American……I AM CANADIAN!!!

“I have to laugh at the people that say we pay too much in property taxes in this town. Didn’t I see a report saying that about 1/3 of the City residents pay only about $1,000 per year in property taxes……..wow how much lower can they get?”

That’s part of the problem. They’re not enough to maintain this town and its infrastructure. Low taxes have not brought people to this town, the population has been basically stagnant for the last 20 years. And yes, City Hall has to cut the fat as well.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who uses what. The point is that we’re not paying enough to maintain and/or sustain it.

It’s not about being a ‘frills’ or ‘no frills’ town. It’s about having the taxbase support the facilities without going into debt, which is the way things have been run since Kinsley at least. You can’t keep running up the credit card without any strategy to repay it.

And to be fair, This problem is not unique to PG, governments are starting to deal with this reality everywhere. Read up about the fiscal cliff in the US for some scary stuff. They need a GST type of tax to keep them afloat, but nobody will come out and say it.

ski50:- “And if corporations are sitting on piles of cash, that cash has already been lent out by the banks to corporations who don’t have piles of cash and are trying to grow, or to homeowners, or to city’s like ours. Cash doesn’t sit anywhere, it get’s lent right back out again.”
——————————————–

Only what is “lent out by the Banks to corporations who don’t have piles of cash and are trying to grow” is NOT the ‘piles of cash’ other corporations are supposed to have. Those ‘piles of cash’, if on deposit at any Bank, are a Liability of that Bank to the holder of that deposit.

And Banks don’t lend their Liabilities.

In reality, those deposits are part of the Bank’s reserves. Which are never lent to anyone, except in certain instances, to other Banks.

When any Bank lends, or spends, for any purpose, it is creating new money that didn’t exist before it lent or spent.

If certain corporations are sitting on ‘piles of cash’ the likelihood is that they do not feel very optimistic about their continued prospects for profitability in the near future.

They might want to remain in a fairly liquid position to ensure needed operating capital is available to them to tide them over a further downturn in the economy. In such a downturn, their normal access to bank credit might be imperiled at a time when it’s needed. As a matter of simple survival.

Or, alternately in some instances, they may be hoping to pick up another business, or additional assets, at fire-sale prices should the economy weaken further. Without having to take on any additional debt, and before an expected recovery occurs.

In any case, taxing corporations in Canada at a higher tax rate is unlikely to produce any great benefit to this country and the average citizen.

So far as most corporate taxation is concerned it would only be an additional cost that the corporation has to pass on to its customers if it’s to remain in business.

If it’s products or services are sold in Canada, Canadian consumers bear the tax. If they’re sold abroad, in competition with products from other countries in the ‘global market’, then a higher tax load would only be beneficial if the corporation’s other costs are lower ~ something difficult to achieve in Canada.

In spite of some corporations reporting higher profits in dollars, I think you’ll find on average corporate profits are generally declining as a percentage of overall sales (leading to the tendency of the large, or even not-so-large, corporation to try to get ever larger. Not so much as a matter of greed, as is often supposed, but more as a matter of survival in continuing to be able to access needed bank credit.)

If we are talking user fees why not make the PG Cougars pay their full share. I know that a few years ago our taxes went up about 15% and 14.5% was for the Cougars.

But you do have to be carefull about user fees as there is a tipping point where people will not pay and then you lose customers. I think that has already happened at the swimming pools with the last increase.

People who want others to pay for non-essential services they use are spongers. Try to defend it from any position you want, but the fact remains they are sponging off of other tax-payers.

The blow-back is building. The spring is winding tighter. And when everything comes crashing down – as eventually it will – there will be a society of spongers standing around in shock. All wanting someone else to fix their problem of course.

And by the way, “core services” is all the government should be involved in anyway and that would be truly “core services”. Infrastructure like roads, water, sewer, fire and police protection.

The city hasn’t even begun to get creative with ways to save money. They are only being creative on ways to increase revenue.

Hey council … here’s an idea SPEND LESS MONEY!!!

As obesity rates rise fewer people will be willing to pay for sports and recreation facilities. It is really no surprise so many people on this board see no-use in exercise or leisure activities. Those would be the ones we are subsidizing with out nanny-state healthcare system.

If obesity rates are rising then those who have the time to use sports and recreation facilities to exercise aren’t using them, are they? And those of us who keep the lard off by doing as the government tells us we should be doing, working longer and harder and improving our country’s productivity, (so we can continue to prosper, so it is said ~ though I can’t quite see how people that keep working longer and harder and have less and less leisure can be said to be prospering), won’t have the time to use them.

You work because the government tells you?

Spare me the whine about “no-time” to practice leisure or physical fitness. An active lifestyle is just that: A lifestyle choice. If you choose to blame your chosen vocation, then in reality you are probably just lazy.

“Those would be the ones we are subsidizing with out nanny-state healthcare system.”

You mean to tell me that we are not subsidizing the ones who are playing hockey and crash into the boards, receive a possible concusion and go by ambulance to the hospital and get an emergency MRI …. or those who skateboard and break a leg ….. or those who bike and fall … or those who ski and fall ….. “

How about the ones who play high marking on their ATVs and snowmobiles …..

Than there are those ho self medicate with “natural” products and screw it up and have to go to thier doctors to figure out why their metabolism is all wonky ….

Yeah..the healthy active people are overworking the healthcare system. You go right on thinking that is so. You have shed a little bit of light onto the mentality of denial so prevalent within the lazy crowd.

I guess you just listed all the reasons why you don’t participate in any activities. It would suck to be your kids.

A brisk snow shoe hike and shoveling your senior neighbors windrow will trim off some of that fat doughnut gut and pizza face,probably good for a little cardio also,Unless it`s too late and smokings taken most of your lungs then sign up and I`ll come and shovel your driveway.

“A larger version would be the soccer fields on 15th.” .. user fees (registration) already pays for a great deal of the maintenance costs of those fields. Soccer is the one sport in town that is affordable to pretty much every family, whether it be a single parent or someone with limited income. To increase the costs to those people would prove detrimental and would effectively eliminate one more thing that is affordable for marginal families. And in theory could remove that activity from the citys “things to do list” and just put more kids on the streets looking for kicks.

“where the rich people in power make the rules and make the joe working class pay for the system” .. sorta how it is now you mean? Jeez, where have you been. When was the last time you remember joe working class not paying for the system. Have you forgot the huge drop in corporate tax that harper gifted corporations (the rich) and put on the backs of joe working class.

I wonder if simply living in the bad air quality capital of Canada results in other taxpayers subsidizing PG residents with our nanny-state healthcare system?

“Soccer is the one sport in town that is affordable to pretty much every family, whether it be a single parent or someone with limited income. To increase the costs to those people would prove detrimental and would effectively eliminate one more thing that is affordable for marginal families”

That is a good point But. If part of the mandate for the city is to encourage an active lifestyle and reasonable accessibility to activities for all residents (which I think is fair), then I tend to agree with you. Of course, the underlying question is whether or not kids from marginal families are playing soccer or not. I’m sure some are, but I also know for a fact that soccer is played by MANY kids from families that could afford to pay more.

Perhaps the city should look at working with some of the charitable organizations in the community to administer registration for various activities through their organizations. One would assume that they would know who the marginal families may be and perhaps a reduced rate for activities could be offered through them while an increased rate would be applied to others when they register through the city.

Another usually successful alternative is to encourage Corporate sponsorship of things. (Subsidize) However, it doesn’t take long to find the critics for this strategy either.

Look at CN, Canfor, Integris, Telus, RBC or ?????? It’s ok to slam corporations, but what about all of the corporate sponsorship that already support many events in our community?

Prince George has a great amount of support from our Corporations. Quit bashing them and support and encourage them instead.

Don’t forget all of the smaller businesses in this city who also pack a huge load in the way of donations of time, money and resources to our community. They put the government to shame.

Good comment, servant. A lot of critics forget about the good things corporations and businesses bring to communities, other than the jobs of course.

Has anyone seen JJ Springer on any sports jerseys ?

Perhaps if they stopped the practice of giving city employees, police, firefighters, and others who have steady employment and good salaries free family passes for the aquatic center and other facilities, then there would be no need to raise the rates for everyone else, many of whom make far less than the above employees.

If this reports full recommendations were to come into effect its not a city I would want to raise my family in. All kids regardless of their parents income should be given an opportunity to participate in recreational activities… that is part of being a community

PG needs affordable recreation facilities otherwise its just an over grown work camp for those that can afford it. Funny that is how most people in the south of the province perceive PG as anyways.

Meanwhile infrastructure falls apart, my taxes go up, and wasteful spending gets a free pass….

“it doesn’t take long to find the critics for this strategy either”

Take it as a critique or not …. I do not care …. all I say to that is that donations like that are paid for by the people using the service. Guess who pays for the service. I also understand that if it is a telus or bank or fortis or whatever donation, it comes from a regional pot of money they ach have so it is local people who donate. If they increase it, then local media will get less or our service fee rates will go up. Money only goes so far. If it is re-allocated then there will be winners and losers. The amount of money is finite unless we, the user, or we the taxpayers pay more.

Who is JJ Springer?

;-)

The official supplier of scented candles for the Treasure Cove casino.

Ah yes, the place Susan Schultz started in the old Corless house built in 1918. Amazing how long some buildings can last in PG if one sets their mind to it.