Discussions

We received an update from our RM the other day, to advise us that the MB Government portion of our Education Property tax credit will no longer be rebated. This amounted to what in other provinces is known as the Homeowners grant and here in MB, it was a max of $700.00 off your taxes if you were an eligible homeowner. Now the government is withholding that portion of your taxes and you will no longer receive that credit! That amount will mean an increase of any where from a few dollars to several hundred depending on your taxes. Your local municipalities will receive not one penny of that money, it will all go into Government revenue! What a sneaky way to slide in a tax increase and it will very negatively affect many homeowners who are already struggling to pay their taxes....not good Mr. Pallister!  
"Budget 2018 announced that effective for the 2019 tax year, the calculation of the Manitoba Education Property Tax Credit (EPTC) will be based on school taxes and the $250 deductible will be eliminated. The Seniors’ Education Property Tax Credit will also be calculated on the school tax portion."

Well, I don't have the old scheme in front of me, but if you read the government website it sounds like yes, they did rejig it a big but most households will still receive the full $700 credit. The only ones who won't are the ones who pay very little taxes to begin with.  
 
Although I'm confused about the $250 thing. It says in one spot it will be eliminated, but in the examples there's clearly a $250 threshold.  
 
Or am I missing something?  
 
https://www.gov.mb.ca/finance/tao/eptc.html

No you are not missing anything, they are not going to have the $250 deductible any-more, it is just that they have changed part of the website but not completely updated the rest of the site.  
Even the links within the site do not give examples for 2019, and some of the material is archived and will not be amended, or so it says.  
Not having the deductible will mean a bigger rebate, up to the maximum, for some households.  
Have not received anything from our RM at present but the wheels of government grind exceedingly slow.

Perhaps scan the letter or type out the wording of the letter. Not much has changed to my knowledge. I’m sure the newspapers would have mentioned it.  
 
The opposite is actually true. Governments both Conservative and NDP are both trying to figure out how to unlink school taxes from property ownership. Discontinuing the education portion of property taxes would be cheered but the replacement tax would be a political minefield. The $700 rebate is a piecemeal halfway approach to getting there. If anything they would keep increasing the $700 amount until the school property tax effectively didn’t apply to anyone.

All I can tell you is that we received a letter from our RM (Rossburn), stating that our taxes would be increasing by the amount of the Gov portion of the EPTC, and that they had fought against it, but there was no change n the governments decision. I will post a scan of the letter later, as it clearly states that just in the RM of Rossburn alone, that will amount to $87,000.00 in extra tax for residents, and that it would be only a few dollars for some, but over $500.00 for others. For us, it will be just over $100.00 but that is still a significant amount!  
As far as media, that is why I posted this here, as I couldn't believe that we had heard nothing about this the news?

The Education Property Tax Rebate was implemented to off set the education tax portion of your property taxes only. Somehow over time it seemed to have been expanded to be more than what it was originally meant for, and now of course people are upset because some will be paying more taxes. This should of never been allowed to be more than what it was meant for.

Any chance of someone posting a pic of the letter (with personal info removed/redacted of course)?

Well, if that's the case I'm even more confused than before!! My understanding is that the school portion of the property taxes is what funds schools, and that's ultimately what the credit is supposed to be offsetting. That's not levied by the RM, but by the school division.  
 
Of couse, the RM has posted diddly-squat online. I too would be very interested in seeing the letter, as something is clearly not computing.

I honestly can't even fanthom what an alternate arrangment would entail for funding schools. In many ways, linking it to proporty taxes makes sense, but maybe it's time to start paying from general coffers? Then you don't run into this rebate nonsense... having worked for government for a decade it seems very plain to me that it would be more cost effective to simply reduce the amount of taxes paid generally than to waste money administering all these costly and backwards rebates.

In order to replace what school divisions levy across the province to fund education would amount to 700 million dollars. That would be almost 3% extra provincial sales tax. Would also be a huge increase in personal income tax.  
The reason why it was linked to property tax over 100 years ago was the fact that 1) it was a predictable source of revenue and 2) it allowed the much smaller schools of the time a feeling of ownership. Meaning it allowed local schools to decide what their communities wanted. Basic curriculum was provincially mandated but other courses and subjects were what local communities wanted. That has not changed.

getting tax from all the people that work, rather than home owners, since owning a home is becoming harder and renting is the only option for many, rebates can be removed, when you retire if your in come goes down so will your taxes, you will be able to stay in your home longer