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Canwest News Service
The British Columbia government is eliminating some controversial property-tax regulations on farmland in order to encourage development of more small-scale farms, Community and Rural Development Minister Bill Bennett announced Friday.
So-called split assessments, which taxed farmland at a lower agricultural rate but apply higher residential tax rates to undeveloped areas, and home "plates" or footprints on the same property were said by government to be acting as a deterrent to expansion of farming inside and outside the province's Agricultural Land Reserve.
The revised rules compel local governments to tax entire properties at the lower agricultural rate if at least 50 per cent of the land is devoted to farming, or if at least 25 per cent of the land generates a specified minimum amount of income from farming for the landowner.
Metro Vancouver's regional government indicated earlier this month it opposed the change, which was proposed by the province in a report earlier this year.
The regional district is concerned that elimination of the split assessment will open the door to unchecked monster-home construction on viable agricultural land. It is also concerned that the change will force municipal governments to hike property-tax "mill" rates on all agricultural land in order to recoup tax revenue that will be lost, to the detriment of active farmers.
"We are concerned that removal of the split classification without some other means of limiting the size of the houses could actually encourage construction of larger houses in agricultural areas," said Richmond Coun. Harold Steves, chairman of Metro Vancouver's agriculture committee.
"This would particularly apply in Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge, through the Fraser Valley and in Richmond as well. It has hit us in Richmond already."
Neither the province's July 2009 Farm Assessment Review Panel report nor Metro Vancouver's review of that report specify the number of farms that will benefit from the changes, or the amount of property-tax revenue that municipal governments will lose as a result of the changes.
A primary reason for the change is to support more development of small- scale agriculture on the Saanich peninsula on southern Vancouver Island, Bennett said.
The BC Agriculture Council has also argued that not all of a given farm property may be suited to agriculture – citing uneven land, riparian areas around streams and buffer zones between properties.
Bennett said farmers hit with higher residential tax rates for parts of their properties were increasingly looking to develop it for residential use. "We want to make it easier for people to do small-scale agriculture, not harder, " Bennett said, adding that the government's review panel heard "dozens and dozens" of stories from farmers who said it was difficult to stay in business and "one of the problems was the value of the property taxes they were charged."
ssimpson@vancouversun.com
