A colleague of mine sent me this Bloomberg article today and said, "Here's an article about things you already know." The article cites a recent report by Altus Group that compared government-related fees on new housing across Canada and the U.S. What they discovered will not surprise any of you who are in the industry: Toronto has some of the highest government-imposed charges on new homes.
For new condo apartments, the report found that government charges can add up to as much as C$124,582 per unit. That's about 50% higher than the average unit in the U.S. and about 30% higher than the average unit in Canada (see above chart for the list of cities). While all of us in the industry can appreciate this, I don't think most homeowners and tenants understand this. Hopefully they're reading this post.
Chart: Bloomberg
The below figure shows the taxing authority of US cities by state. In some cases there’s a city or two with additional taxing authority. New York City, for instance, has been authorized by the state to levy property, sales, and income taxes, whereas other cities in the state can only levy property and sales taxes.
The figure is from a recent report by Brookings called, City budgets in an era of increased uncertainty. In addition to revenue sources, the report also covers spending limits and tax structure alignment.
The report concludes that cities generally have a stronger fiscal position when their tax structure aligns with their economy. For example, cities such as Las Vegas that have lower than average property values and are only authorized to collect property taxes, do not score well.
One thing that the above figure does not get across is that more money now comes in from non-tax revenues, user fees, and other charges. According to 2012 census data, 37% of all municipal revenue in the United States came from these sorts of charges.
To download a PDF of the full report, click here.