Fair tax shake depends on ag definition

Sunday, January 20, 2008

by DON STONEMAN

Aylmer farmer Mark Wales, chair of the OFA'’s taxation committee, says a clear definition of what is agriculture continues to be a source of confusion when the province's Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) is assessing properties. The OFA has been assembling a list of value retention activities that should be recognized as part of farming.

These are all things that need to be done to prepare a product for an eventual market, Wales says.

The most recent activities added to the list include seed production, preparing juice that will be used later to make ice wine, freezing, drying, slicing, coring and quartering of fruits and vegetables, and pickling vegetables. Seed production, including cleaning, bagging and storing, are on the list but had been problematic, Wales says.

“No one knew what to do with it before.” He says the list has been approved by both the Rural Ontario Municipalities Association and the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario.

The issue of assessments is with the government Wales says. MPAC assessors “need a clear definition (of what is agriculture) in order to get it right the first time,” he says. A list of approved activities “saves time, appeals and lawyers.”

In the end, he says, it doesn’t matter to MPAC how a property is assessed. Appeals are pointless, he says. “They cost our members money and uncertainty.”

At a board meeting in January, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture approved a broader definition of “value added” activities that favours products grown in Ontario. The definition calls for facilities to be subject only to the farm tax rate if “historically at least 51 per cent of the product is grown and value added to by the same farmer or farmers and at least 90 per cent of the product is grown in Ontario.”

Wales says this policy will allow farmers to prepare their farms products for sale to the public by adding some ingredients that can’t be grown in Ontario. BF