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Old Posted Jul 24, 2011, 5:11 AM
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Prometheus Prometheus is offline
Reason and Freedom
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Vancouver/Toronto
Posts: 4,015
Quote:
Originally Posted by racc View Post

The point is that many businesses do not have on-street parking for their customers and are forced to build parking on their property at their expense and then get taxed on this property that is used for parking. They do not benefit at all from on-street parking and yet still pay the same levels of tax or likely more due to property tax on the portion of their property that is used for tax than the businesses that have access to city providing on-street parking..
This part is correct.

Quote:
Originally Posted by racc View Post

So essentially, the city provides a benefit to some businesses and does not provide it to others.
This part is not correct.

It's not correct because the street-side parking that some businesses receive cannot rationally be construed as a "benefit." Why? Because the commercial property taxes such businesses pay to the city are far in excess of the cost of their portion of all the public services they receive in return, including street-side parking. Simply put, the street-side parking businesses receive is fully paid for by the businesses themselves, not by the city or anyone else. Thus, businesses are no more receiving a "benefit" than a person who receives an item for which he himself has paid the full purchase price.

Properly understood, therefore, the only persons to whom street-side parking can possibly be construed as a "benefit" are residential property owners and renters, who pay only a fraction of the taxes paid by commercial property owners.

Last edited by Prometheus; Jul 24, 2011 at 6:13 AM.
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