Daily Commercial News reported on the recent IMFG Perspectives paper New Tax Sources for Canada’s Largest Cities: What Are the Options, authored by Harry Kitchen and Enid Slack.
The article, entitled IMFG paper urges broader range of revenues for cities, summarizes the findings in IMFG Perspectives No. 15:
Slack and Kitchen analyzed taxes and other revenue tools as appropriate for eight Canadian cities — Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax.
The paper recommends that decisions on public spending be clearly linked with revenue decisions. Those who make expenditure decisions should also make revenue decisions and the revenue tool should match the type of expenditure being funded, the economists argue, to ensure the public is able to assess the cost of programs with the funding.