Question
A researcher is looking for municipal tax data for southern Ontario municipalities - e.g. mill rates for different uses (commercial vs. residential), etc. The fiscal information he is interested in includes revenue tools used, tax rates, amount collected, and then also expenditures (if available in a comparable format).
Do you know any sources of comparable tax and fiscal data, preferably longitudinal, available at Stat Can? What I’ve seen online on Stat Can appears to be at the provincial or federal levels only.
For example, data might look like this:
Municipality: City of Mississauga; Residential Mill Rate: 15, Commercial Mill rate: 30; Income Tax Rate by location of work: X%; Income tax rate by location of Residence: Y%; Municipal sales tax rate: 3% (independent of HST); Municipal Transportation Expenditures: Q%; Municipal Recreation Expenditures: Z%; Municipal waste disposal expenditures: A%.
If this data is available over multiple years, that’s even better.
CANSIM Table 382-0032 would get him part of the way there (although it doesn’t include rates), but it is only available at the level of Canadian geography, not at the levels of individual municipalities.The same goes for the CANSIM Table 385-0001, 385-0002, 385-0003, and 385-0032, which would get them part of the way there (although they don’t include tax rates), and are not available at the levels of local municipalities.
Answer
For Ontario municipal tax data, I suggest looking at FIR (Financial Information Return) data, found on the Municipal Affairs and Housing website, as follows (or click on the link provided).
Here's a sample spreadsheet for 2013--Column ‘U’ lists the type of taxpayer, including residential: <http://www.mah.gov.on.ca>
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