Trevor Forrest has a suggestion for how the agriculture minister can deal with the severe price squeeze on Saskatchewan farmers.
While Eric Upshall spoke to the Saskatoon chamber of commerce about maintaining farm safety nets and encouraging farmers to find ways to farm within the world price, Loreburn, Sask., farmer Forrest suggested removing the education tax on land.
Forrest said farmers are paying an unfairly high amount of education tax and the province should fix the situation.
“In today’s economy, when the same amount of income can be garnered out of a 10 by 10 office with a computer (as from a farm), it doesn’t seem to be an equitable system,” said Forrest in an interview.
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“Why should a farmer pay more education tax than a lawyer or an accountant?”
Forrest, who farms three sections, said he pays $4,400 in property tax and 64 percent of that is for education. Eliminating this tax and reducing farmers’ property tax by two-thirds would be a positive and practical way to make farming more affordable, he said.
Reduce payouts
“If we want to address the problem of the margins of farming, we can’t do much on the price side, so let’s do something on the cost side.”
Upshall seemed to share Forrest’s dislike of education taxes being part of property tax. He admitted recent province-wide tax reassessment had been a “double whammy” and had “almost blind-sided” farmers.
But the minister said the matter is complicated and has to be reviewed.
