The Personal Vehicle Tax is dead in the new year.
Toronto Council voted Wednesday to kill the unpopular tax that adds $60 to the cost of renewing a Torontonian's vehicle license. The tax provides $64 million in revenue to the City of Toronto, and city officials don't yet know how they will make up the loss in revenue going into the 2011 budget process.But Mayor Rob Ford told council that he'd campaigned promising to repeal the vehicle registration tax and he was going to keep that promise, removing the tax as of Jan. 1, 2011."We have a spending problem, ladies and gentlemen, not a revenue problem," said Ford. "We will have to slow down on our spending - get the taxpayers running the city. This will help out many, many people."Ford said it was important to cancel the tax immediately, rather than its anniversary date of September 2011. By doing that, the city loses revenue and motorists whose birthday falls between September and December will still have to pay this year's vehicle reigistration tax.Ford said the tax was "a terrible tax, it was unfair, it was unnecessary and makes no sense to continue punishing the great people of this city for another eight months." After the meeting he told reporters that putting the money back in taxpayers' pockets would stimulate the economy."I just put $64 million back in their pockets and they can do what they want with it," he said. "They can spend it and stimulate the economy or they can save it."Ford said he would use his $60 to buy Christmas presents for his two children.Council spent about five hours debating the issue. A few councillors tried to have the decision made in concert with the 2011 budget process in February."This isn't a question of left or right, whether you support the mayor or not - maybe not even a question of whether you support the personal vehicle tax," said Beaches-East York Councillor Janet Davis. "It's a question of how do we fill a $64-million hole that we will create in the budget of 2011."But most councillors supported getting rid of the tax, which became a major issue for voters on the campaign trail."One reason we made it so unpopular was we decided to make you pay a tax on your birthday," said Scarborough Centre Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker.