Report to: General Committee Date of Meeting: May 17, 2010
SUBJECT: Fee
By-law Amendments for HST
PREPARED
BY: Raj Raman, Acting Director,
Financial Reporting
RECOMMENDATION:
- THAT the report “Fee By-law
Amendments for HST” be received.
- THAT a by-law to amend
By-law 2002-276, in the form attached hereto as Schedule A, be adopted.
- AND THAT notice to the
public be provided in accordance with By-law 2001-1, a by-law to prescribe
the form and manner and times for the provision of reasonable notice.
- AND that Staff be authorized
and directed to do all things necessary to give effect to this resolution.
PURPOSE:
The
purpose of this report is to obtain Council’s approval to amend By-law
#2002-276 to reflect the changes to the fees from “including GST” and “plus
applicable GST” to “including applicable taxes” where indicated specifically
and “plus applicable taxes” in respect of all other fees respectively and
conform to the recent legislation regarding HST that comes into effect from
July 1, 2010.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Not applicable
BACKGROUND:
On
June 19, 2006, the Fee By-Law 2002-276 which included Town of Markham fees was
amended to reflect a phased reduction of GST from 7% to 5% by including a
generic term “Plus GST” or “Includes GST”.
The 2009 Ontario Budget announced that effective July
1, 2010, PST would be harmonized with GST to create a federally administered
single sales tax rate of 13%. The provincial and federal portions continue to
be 8% and 5% respectively.
OPTIONS/DISCUSSION:
The
Fee By-Law 2002-276 includes fees that are subject to GST. Some fees are shown
as “GST included” and others are shown as “plus applicable GST”.
In
order to comply with the HST changes effective July 1, 2010 and accommodate
future changes to the taxes, staff recommend that:
a.
fees
which are shown as “GST included” be replaced with the term “including
applicable taxes” as appropriate. The fees that are currently shown as “GST
included” (e.g. maps and schedules, publication fees for planning, engineering,
urban design documents, etc.) will be increased by 8 % and rounded off to the
nearest dollar wherever applicable. The fees relating to some recreation
programs will be increased by 8% and are shown as fees “including applicable
taxes” under a separate column “Effective July 1, 2010”.
b.
The
fees that are shown as “plus applicable GST” be deleted where applicable and to
be read as “plus applicable taxes”.
Staff
have amended the attached By-law 2002-276 shown as Schedule A to reflect the
above changes.
FINANCIAL CONSIDERATIONS:
There should be no
major financial impact to the Town as a result of the amendment and rounding of
fees that currently include GST in the by-law.
FINANCIAL TEMPLATE: (external link)
No
financial implications are considered in this report
RECOMMENDED BY:
ATTACHMENT:
Schedule A -
By-Law 2002-276
Comments: Replaced Entire Report approved by Catherine
Conrad May 26, 2010 and attached updated fee bylaw.