Rocky Mountain House town council wants to distance itself from steep education tax increases expected to be coming from the Alberta government.
Education taxes are going up 6.3 per cent this year and are expected to go up 10 per cent next year. Those taxes are collected by municipalities on behalf of the province and show up as a line item on municipal tax bills.
While the municipality does not get a cut of that money to run its operations, many residents look at the bottom line of their tax bill and don't differentiate between municipal and education taxes, say critics of the longstanding system.
"I just think if they're adding 6.3 per cent on to the education portion of our bill the residents don't understand that's a provincial tax that we're remitting directly to the government. And if it's 10 per cent next year, that's a large amount," said Rocky Mountain House Acting Mayor Len Phillips at a council meeting on Thursday.
With a 10 per cent tax increase on its way, town council would rather not be associated with the increase and the inevitable fallout.
"I think it's time the province collects its tax on its own through taxation they do collect through personal income taxes," he said.
The issue was a hot topic at a recent AbMunis leadership meeting and at the Rural Municipalities of Alberta conference that ran Monday through Wednesday in Edmonton.
Phillips proposed a notice of motion that was passed by council to sponsor a resolution for the next Alberta Municipalities (AbMunis) conference. The resolution calls on ABMunis, which represents 260 municipalities of all sizes, "to advocate the province to remove the education portion of municipal taxes and have it separate from the municipal tax bills sent out to residents."
The province does not compensate Rocky Mountain House, or any other municipality, for the cost of collecting taxes on the government's behalf.
City of Calgary took a stand this week and plans to send a bill for collecting school taxes – about 40 per cent of all taxes collected – to the province. The cost of collecting those taxes could be around $10 million municipal staff estimated.
