Decreased school taxes and the end of inequities

Adoption of Bill n° 166 – Decreased school taxes and the end of inequities

QUÉBEC CITY, March 27, 2018 – Sébastien Proulx, Minister of Education, Recreation and Sports and Minister responsible for the Capitale-Nationale welcomes the National Assembly’s adoption today of Bill n^o 166, An Act to reform the school tax system. The passage of this bill meets the five main objectives that were at the heart of the efforts to reform the school taxation system:

• Eliminate taxpayer inequity caused by tax rate variations within the same region
• Prevent the transfer between linguistic school boards of taxpayers who do not have children receiving educational services
• Ease the tax burden on taxpayers
• Maintain the level of funding to school boards
• Respect the taxation power of school boards

It is important to note that the opposition parties voted against Bill n° 166, which will reduce the tax burden for Quebec taxpayers.

Quote:

The adoption of this bill updates a 25-year-old tax system. A thorough revision was therefore necessary and overdue. I would like to point out that we have been responsive the needs of the population with this bill. I also want to thank the school boards and the most affected taxpayers for sharing their comments and concerns, allowing us to move forward with our reform project. By eliminating tax rate variations for residents of the same region, we have corrected an anomaly resulting from obsolete rules. I am also pleased to see that the vast majority of Quebec taxpayers will benefit from an often significantly reduced tax burden.

– Sébastien Proulx, Minister of Education, Recreation and Sports and Minister responsible for the Capitale-Nationale

Key points:

This Act contains the following provisions:

• Creation of 18 school tax regions derived from the administrative regions system
• Determination of a method for calculating the maximum regional school tax rate
• Establishment of rules and conditions with regard to the collection of school taxes and the apportionment of the school tax proceeds
• Change of the name of the Comité de gestion de la taxe scolaire de l’île de Montréal to “Comité de gestion de la taxe scolaire”
• Designation, by the school boards in the same school tax region, of one of themselves as responsible for the collection of school taxes in that region or assignment of that mandate to the Comité de gestion de la taxe scolaire
• Creation of a committee to monitor the collection, recovery and apportionment of the regional school tax in each school tax region
• Extension of the transitional period from one to two years to give the school boards the time to organize the regional collection of school taxes
• Payment of a regional equalization subsidy to maintain the level of funding of school boards

Related link:

• An act to reform the school tax system