Keeping your taxes down!

Keep Residential Taxes Sustainable

Continuing to place more of the municipal tax burden on residential properties—particularly single-family homes—is not a sustainable long-term strategy.

Unfortunately, over 80% of Sooke property taxes come from single homes and this needs to be balanced with other development to control the rise in taxes. We need to broaden Sooke’s tax base, with more revenue coming from commercial and industrial development and from higher-value, higher-density residential development.

There is a common misconception that single-family homes pay for their own infrastructure. They don’t and certainly can’t in the long term. Roads, sewer systems, firefighting, policing, parks and other municipal services are relatively fixed costs. That means that it costs Sooke taxpayers the same to service a few single family detached homes or one apartment complex with ground floor commercial. The much larger amount of taxes paid by commercial and higher density residential subsidizes the cost of shared services and keeps taxes lower for home owners. If we continue building out suburbs without commercial/industrial, we risk increasing the long-term cost of taxes for homeowners.

Higher-density, mixed-use development can put more homes and businesses on infrastructure we already have, while providing local services, different housing options and protecting single home owners from unsustainable increases.

Takeaway

Grow the tax base—not just the tax bill.

More commercial development. More diverse housing. More value from existing infrastructure. A stronger municipal tax base that helps keep residential taxes sustainable.