City Hall is starting to work on a municipal accommodation tax bylaw.
At its last meeting, council gave staff direction to look into adding a 4 per cent tax to all hotel and motel bills in the city for stays less than 30 days. CAO Dave Landers says through provincial legislation, the money collected through the tax will be used to help the community. “Some of those funds could be reinvested back into tourism through a not-for-profit or a charity type tourism offerings. The municipality also has the opportunity to use some of those funds to offset some of the costs of its operations.”
Landers says this tax would also be imposed on things like Air BnB’s. “In other communities, like in the City of Vancouver just recently had done that and also followed up with an audit to make sure the funds were actually coming back to the municipality.” He says what happens in some communities with Air BnB’s, housing gets taken off the market and turned into an Air BnB, creating a housing crisis. “You don’t want to see some inadvertent problems created through tourism opportunities, so we want to make sure we follow a similar regime.”
The COA adds that Timmins isn’t the first community to look at this. Landers says, “our northern partners Sudbury, North Bay, Sault St. Marie, Thunder Bay, Kenora have already moved forward with this.” He adds that there are communities in the Cochrane district who are also bringing this before their council’s at this point in time. “Others are taking a more watch and see approach.”
Landers says staff will bring a report to the roundtable after the election. He says the goal is to have this tax starting in January.
