IMFG Director Dr. Enid Slack was interviewed in an article entitled Nobody likes property taxes, but Toronto turns hating them into an art form, on TVO’s The Next Ontario.
Concerning Toronto’s comparatively high rate of taxation for commercial properties compared to residential properties,
“I’ve looked at property taxes in 25 different countries and everyone does it,” says Enid Slack, director of the Institute on Municipal Finance and Government at the University of Toronto. “There isn’t an economic justification for it. Commercial properties use fewer services than residents, and businesses are more mobile than residents. If you were looking at it from economics, you’d tax commercial properties less.”