The Peter Bjornson Principle

In today’s Free Press, Education Minister Peter Bjornson's “staff gave school boards verbal orders last Friday to keep surpluses to four per cent of revenues or less, or else face having education property taxes capped at 3.3 per cent -- the same amount by which Bjornson has increased the province's share of education funding.“

A paltry 3.3% increase is fair to taxpayers and school divisions, right? Let’s look at the mathematics first before we answer this question.

Assume an individual is earning $50,000 gross income and that the educational component of his/her property tax bill is $1,500. This person’s wage increases are indexed to inflation so their purchasing power follows the Consumer Price Index. The CPI will be assumed to be 1.4%, the average of 1.2% for January, 2007 and 1.6% for December, 2006.

Right now, the education component of the property tax bill is 3% of gross income. Next year, this number goes to 3.06% of income. No big deal, right? WRONG. In 100 years, the education portion of the property tax bill becomes 19.2% of our poor taxpayer’s GROSS income. 1/5 of their income must be allocated to pay ONE FORM OF TAX. How much is left for income taxes, EI, CPP, mortgage, food, car or gas payments?

Is a 100 year time horizon too far away to worry about? Our grandchildren might beg to differ. While Today’s NDP might not be concerned about how their actions affect our collective future, perhaps we should be worrying for them…