The education tax revolt is growing.
Now, more than 50 Saskatchewan rural municipalities are refusing to pay the education portion of property tax collected on farmland.
Three weeks ago, there were 17.
Glenn Blakely, spokesperson for the Tax Action Group and a councillor for the RM of Spy Hill, said Dec. 5 that as the protest gains momentum, the provincial government has to sit up and take notice.
The RMs argue that farmers and landowners pay too much education tax on farmland and more than their fair share.
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“It’s to the point where it’s our fifth highest input cost,” Blakely said.
They have asked for a 55 percent reduction over the next four years.
Blakely said that sounds like a lot, but reassessment has also pushed the tax up 30 percent.
At the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan annual meeting last week in Regina, both agriculture minister Mark Wartman and rural development minister Clay Serby acknowledged that something has to be done.
Government relations minister Len Taylor has said the province is working on a long-term solution to address the inequity by 2007, but Blakely said that’s too far in the future.
“That is totally unacceptable,” he said.
As the Tax Action Group’s protest grows, the executive director of the Saskatchewan School Boards Association said the maverick RMs will end up hurting their taxpayers and local children.
Bill Wells said last year’s decision by RMs to provide discounts to those who paid their taxes late, rather than to those who paid early, resulted in interest costs to school boards of several hundred thousand dollars. If boards don’t get their tax money they have two choices: cut programming or increase mill rates to cover costs.
“It’s an illegal act, by their own admission,” Wells said. “These are elected people declaring they’re not going to follow the law, and that seems to be acceptable.”
Individual school boards can take council members to court and Blakely expects that some will go that route.
He said while many have criticized what the group is doing, no one has said that it is wrong to ask for a better, fairer system.
