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Tom Monto

Widow pensioners, not Business needs

When city councillors today talk about redistributing the tax burden from businesses on to property owners, they may not be considering the effect on poor pensioner widows who have a difficult time making ends meet nowadays.


As someone has pointed out, the difference between workers and business owners is that business owners have a business, if they lose that they become workers. Workers do not have business to lose - they are already workers.


Same applies under these troublous times.


To put pensioners on the block to save businesses, is to support someone who already has more by taking away from someone who already has less. Especially since there is no promise that a business will not close anyway.


And don't forget that if a business cannot pay its taxes, or says it cannot, it does not. There may be penalties down the road but not necessarily if it has clout. Perhaps the city will allow them time. Likely that will happen if the city figures they are too big to fail. That the jobs they provide are worth the burden put on to others.


Pensioners on the other hand are not too big to fail. They can be put in a situation where they have to choose between paying property tax or buying medicine, some may be forced on the street or to a life of couch surfing. Does raising property taxes on home-owners affect the number of the city's homeless? I would hate to take that chance...


A basic tenet of taxation is it should be imposed on those most able to pay.


I would be surprised if square footage-wise a big box store pays as much in property tax as a pensioner with a house on a 32 by 120 foot lot. Already the big corporations are being subsidized. This is to help make their business profitable so they can pay dividends to shareholders, most of whom live outside the city. Edmonton residents spend more of their money within the city. That is sure support for local businesses.


And of course city councillors should not forget that a corporation cannot vote while Edmonton's thousands of pensioners can.


Thanks for reading.

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