Lower Taxes ???

[melvill]

There are rumblings that Ralph and Co. are considering lowering taxes, which may include removing the education tax from property tax.

The latter is something that municipalities have been lobbying for over the past several years. It makes no sense to base education tax on the asssessed value of ones home or in a rural setting ones home and three acre site.
If this tax was removed and education was funded through the provinces general revenue every home owner would see their property tax be reduced by approximately 50%.


I intend on calling my MLA to voice my support for this iniative, hopefully the rest of you do the same.

[cowman]

I sure like that idea! Not real sure, but I don't think either Saskatchewan or Manitoba pay any school tax on farm land? The school tax is right around 50% of my land taxes.
The thing I would be leery of with scrapping the school tax is the municipalities might see this as a good opportunity to make their own little tax grab? My own county is particularily greedy and spendthrift! With all the oil revenue rolling in they still find it necessary to increase taxes on residences and farmland as they blow money like a bunch of drunken sailors! If they were spending the money on upgrading the roads and infrastructure it wouldn't be so bad, but the waste that goes on in there would actually make a drunken sailor blush!
They keep packing more and more bodies into the "Taj Mahal"(new county office) to the point where even the secretaries have secretaries! This from a county that "privatized" services 4 years ago? Thirty seven workers went down the road but in the meantime they hired back 48 pencil pushers! They are pretty well out of control...to say the least!
Of course I am a fairly vocal critic down on coffee row and I have been urged to run for council, but I don't think I'm all that interested? I'm not all that keen on being abused!

[cowman]

sounds like our health region cowman. They have so much administration they have to keep remodeling the local hospital to put in more offices. The most recent no brainer was to take over the nice bright dining room in long term care and build more offices while shoving the poor old folks dining room into a boring corner of the facility. Not enough long term beds but no shortage of support staff for the administration !!!!

[Southpaw]

In Manitoba we pay education tax on farm land. Right now our left wing socialist govt is refunding 50% (if you apply). It comes out of the ag budget so is at the whim out govt. Education tax (prior to rebates) is about 50 - 55% of our land taxes. It should not be on any ag land or production bldgs.

[cowman]

Well thankyou for clarifying that Southpaw. Seems I read something to that affect somewhere, but just wasn't sure? I wonder if other parts of the country also charge school tax against farmland?

[cowman]

The Alberta system of basing education tax on the assessed value of ones home or business certainly does not put paying for education on a level playing field.
Hopefully the province will decide to remove the education tax with a proviso that municipalities cannot pad their mill rates. At this time municipalities do not receive any benefit from the school tax but are forced to collect it. We pay the municipality an added fee on our property taxes for collecting the education portion.

Education like health care is a provincial responsibility and that has long been the position of municipalities.

[almoy]

We pay education tax on farmland in Saskatchewan. It amounts to over 60% of our taxes in our area. Farm groups have been lobbying to have it lowered for years.

[madcow]

No tax PERIOD on farm land here in NS,I see the county contributes 20% of their budget to education .Classes are too big,buildings run down. Our roads are terrible,our hospitals are understaffed,,long wait times for everything but the morgue.Doctors????? better call a vet.AND to TOP IT ALL OFF the province announced a $165 million surplus last week,go figure!!.And oh yeah,, agriculture has been left to go down the drain.(:-(

[madcow]

Local school boards and hospital boards used to look after health and education from K-12.
Now, Health Regions are in charge of health care delivery in Alberta. Their Boards decide which hospitals will remain delivering acute care, which facilities will be closed, how many front line health care workers to hire etc. Health care costs are going through the roof.

School Divisions replaced the local school boards and funding collected by way of taxes in each community goes into the provincial education coffers and is doled out to these school divisions. Money to build new schools comes from Alberta Infrastructure not the local school board.

[cakadu]

How much of the health care costs are going through the roof because of continually burgeoning administration?

I heard an interesting talk about why health care costs are skyrocketing and some of it makes a lot of sense. We heard David Baxter talking about higher health care costs because the number of people over 60 is increasing and it is when we are older that we require more health care. Some of that does make a lot of sense.

Education costs seem to be going up all the time and I don't think it is necessarily getting down to the students where it needs to be.

I have a hard time with over 50% of my tax bill going to education taxes, particularly when I won't ever have any children going through the school system. I don't mind paying some because I would like to see children get the best educaiton possible.

I've also often wondered about how you would make taxation more equal in terms of the number of children that are in a family. By that I mean if you have one child, should you be paying as much tax as the person who has 4 children to put through school?

Are we preparing children for the realities of the future? We are facing an ever more critical shortage of trained and skilled technical workers. We are also facing some very serious succession issues across most, if not all, industries. Are we adequately preparing our youth to fill future employment requirements? We are in desperate need of skilled technical workers as manufacturing, building and energy industries change technology. How do we get kids to see that getting a trade will likely be more valuable than a post-secondary education? Don't get me wrong, we need business people as well as doctors, nurses etc., but tradespeople are going to be the future.

[cakadu]

The rationale behind everyone paying for education is the fact that as you indicated Linda, there is a shortage of skilled people . We all need Doctors, Pharmacists, etc. whether or not we have kids or if they have all gone through the system. There is a dire need to have the entire health and education systems revamped and trim the administrative fat. The continuing care review has really given the health regions a black eye when it comes to delivering health care for some of the most fragile of our citizens, imagine how they would rate if their entire delivery of health care were reviewed.
I have a friend who is involved in the review of long term and continuing care facilities and she said that barely 30% of them were administering medications properly to long term care patients. The province has just continued to throw money at health care and its time to start ensuring that there are benchmarks and expected outcomes in return.

I don't begin to understand the education system. We have teachers and teachers aides in the classroom, and then parents are expected to volunteer to assist in the classroom as well. A friend of mine, who has a slight physical handicap, has a teaching degree from another province, she has tried unsuccessfully to get a teaching job with the school division in her community, year after year she submits her resume but isn't considered, and then this fall they had the nerve to contact her and ask her to volunteer to be a teachers aide as an unpaid position !!!

[cowman]

How much of our total tax bill goes for education and health services? How much is too much and where does it end?
I agree with Linda that the trades are where our education dollars should go. We need more people who can actually do something and less beuracratic pencil pushers! We are fast becoming a society where we have way too much dead weight at the top, who in reality just add to the problem? Do we really need more lawyers, accountants, environmental specialists etc.? The tail is wagging the dog!
With all the growth in the education and health fields, are we smarter or healthier? I don't know. Seems to me we have a lot of educated people who are basically useless and a lot of sick people who don't seem to be getting better?
However the doctors are smiling and the teachers are doing okay?
I suspect an increase in the health and education spending wouldn't improve either...but I suspect the wages might go up!
We tend to rant away at the corporations having monopolies and ripping us off, but isn't that exactly the situation in healthcare and education?

[cakadu]

Cowman, health care costs are going up because we are seeing an increase in age in our population and it is older people who need health care services on a more regular and sustained basis. We are living longer and longer all the time (sometimes that depends on your definition of living) and this will increase costs.

There is a lot of spending in both areas that I would question in terms of the administration.

What sort of response do you think that kids are having towards getting into trades? Many of the older generation feel that kids don't want to get their hands dirty or do manual labour. Is this really the case or have kids just not been well enough informed about the benefits of woring at a trade?

I was reading an article the other day about the RCMP/Peace Officers. There are about 1,000 enrolled in various criminology/law enforcement programs and the average intake age at the Calgary Police Service, for example, is 26. They don't really want them any younger than that - they want them to have life experience. The article mentioned that the RCMP will take recruits at a younger age, but it seems like the supply of graduates may outstrip the demand or will it?

The article went on to say that it will take an officer 5 years to reach a salary of over $50,000/year, while the same salary can be achieved in a trade in 2 years.

The demand for skilled technical workers is not going to go away and young people actually have the best chance at it because they have grown up with computers and technology, while many of us are computer illiterate or know just enough to be dangerous.

When would be the best time to "catch" youth and make them aware of the opportunities?

[cakadu]

not only the aging population is responsible for the increasing health care costs, the fact that there have beem huge strides in technology and procedures is also a key factor in the increase.

There are a significant number of people that abuse the system, and abuse their own bodies which results in deterioration of their health both mental and physical.

[Horse]

Emerald I agree we should get rid of cars think of all the health care costs we would save and out with Macdonalds horses would have to go and no more sking.
I heard on the radio the health care budget in Canada I think was 130 billion in wages now if you take back 40% in taxes it drops to 78 billion and a loss of economic growth , so how would you fix it.