Search Results for: Municipal Revenues

The property tax generates a significant proportion of municipal revenues in Canada and has done so since Confederation. This paper makes the case that the property tax is a good tax for funding local (especially general-purpose) governments for several reasons: the base of the tax is immovable; the tax can generate reliable and sufficient revenues and make local governments independent from other orders of government; many of the core goods and services provided by local governments directly benefit property owners; the tax is visible to property owners; and the tax is easy to administer.
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This presentation by Chibulu Luo, a 2018-19 IMFG Graduate Fellow, explores three key questions: What role do African cities and municipal governments play in producing low-carbon urban growth? Which institutions or governing bodies should take the lead, and why? And what are the opportunities to scale up investments to finance sustainable technologies and infrastructure?
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This collection of papers by leading experts, emerging scholars, and policy makers in the field of municipal taxation and finance sets out the financial challenges facing municipalities in Canada today and examines various practical means of navigating these challenges.
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Across North American cities, the demand for better public transit is pervasive, yet many local governments lack sufficient revenue to finance the construction of new infrastructure. To resolve this dilemma, some localities have turned to citizens directly, proposing temporary, earmarked, sales tax increases as a way to finance capital-intensive projects. Why have some communities been more receptive to this funding model than others? This study addresses this question by comparing the recent experiences of Los Angeles County (2008), where a ballot measure to raise money for transportation was successful and Metro Vancouver (2015), where a similar public vote was unsuccessful.
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Whether institutional constraints are desirable is a debate that may alternatively be framed as one over the merits of local government autonomy. This paper contributes to this debate by empirically analysing the effects of local government autonomy on several outcomes, including the size of government, the ownsource revenue mix, and fiscal sustainability.
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Chris Murray, Toronto’s City Manager, is a former planner who thinks of the future in terms of decades, not years. In this video of his address, Toronto’s Future: Who’s Paying?, he discusses the “elephant in the room” when it comes to municipal government: what kind of city are we leaving behind for future generations?
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Ontario’s Development Charges Act (DCA) provides the legal framework within which municipalities recover growth-related capital costs from the new development giving rise to such costs. While the purpose of the DCA is to ensure that growth pays for itself, the way the DCA is designed prevents it from achieving its obvious goal.
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Toronto City Manager Chris Murray discussed the "elephant in the room" when it comes to municipal government: what kind of city are we leaving behind for future generations?
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