Rural Tourism Assessments

WHEREAS the extraordinarily high property assessments for rural tourism resorts have made these businesses economically unfeasible, and numerous rural resorts have been forced to close their tourism operations as a result; AND WHEREAS in 1996, the Province of British Columbia recognized this problem and introduced the Tourist Accommodation Assessment Relief Act to provide an exemption of up to 150,000 of assessed value in order to provide some relief for owners of tourism accommodation; however, that exemption limit has remained unchanged over the fifteen years since the introduction of the Act despite increasing assessments: THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the UBCM lobby the Province of British Columbia to implement the following legislative changes for rural British Columbia tourism operators: 1. Increase the maximum eligible reduction in assessed property values under the Tourist Accommodation Assessment Relief Act from 150,000 to 500,000 for rural operators; 2. Raise the threshold for the reducing formula from 2,000,000 to 4,000,000; and 3. Introduce formulae to increase the maximum eligible reduction in assessed property values and raise the threshold for applying the reducing formula in proportion to average assessment valuation increases for accommodations.