by SUSAN MANN
Marshall Schuyler’s construction of a new bunkhouse for his seasonal farm workers last year lead to a nasty tax assessment surprise.
That’s because he was recently notified by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) the new bunkhouse would be placed in the residential tax class. MPAC is the non-profit corporation responsible for assessing and classifying all properties in Ontario.
Schuyler, who grows fruits and vegetables in Norfolk County, says the other four bunkhouses on his farm, which have been around for 40 years, are and have always been taxed at the farm rate. “Why would this one be any different?” he asks.
He’s filed a notice of reconsideration with MPAC and is waiting for a reply in the mail. But he’s been told verbally they don’t agree and will tax the new bunkhouse as residential.
“What they have said is when they interpret the regulations” all bunkhouses should be assessed as residential, he explains. But the only reason the bunkhouses are there “is for the farm operation.”
Schuyler doubts his current assessment problem is related to his previous fight with MPAC to change the reclassification of his cherry pitting operation back to farm from industrial. Schuyler and his partners eventually won that fight.
Rose McLean, MPAC director of legal and policy support, says their policy has always been to classify farm bunkhouses as residential. McLean explains that MPAC assessors will first determine a market value for properties and then put the value in a classification for tax purposes. In the case of agriculture the value is based on the property’s use only for farm purposes. What tax rate classification to apply to the property’s different components is the next step. “We would value it (the bunkhouse) as a farm building and the land under it as farm land,” she says, “but not classify it that way.”
Schuyler’s assessment would increase “because that bunkhouse wouldn’t have been assessed before,” she says. “We would assess it and when we assess it we would put it in the right class and the correct class is residential.”
McLean says most of the bunkhouses in Ontario are assessed as residential “and have always been. There’s been no change in our policy.” The classification of bunkhouses is “residential because there’s a regulation that tells us what falls within the residential class.”
Farm groups, including the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association, the Ontario Tender Fruit Producers’ Marketing Board and the Ontario Agricultural Commodity Council, are trying to arrange a meeting with provincial Finance Minister Dwight Duncan and the Ontario Tender Fruit Producers is finalizing a letter to the provincial finance ministry. The groups argue the buildings should be assessed as farm and farmers should pay the farm tax rate for them rather than the residential tax rate.
Federation vice chair Mark Wales says they’ve been trying to get the policy changed for the past five years.
Adrian Huisman, manager of the tender fruit board, says the situation intensified this year when MPAC began classifying newly constructed bunkhouses as residential. “They may well be correct in what they’re doing. Unfortunately it’s a hardship on our farmers.” The farm groups are now lobbying the finance minister “to change the definition of a bunkhouse so that in all cases they’re assessed as part of the farm,” he says.
Huisman disputes McLean’s assertion that all bunkhouses in Ontario currently are classified as residential. So does Brian Gilroy, chair of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association.
“Most bunkhouses in the province have not been (classified) as residential units,” Gilroy says.
Finance Ministry spokesman Scott Blodgett says “there are no plans to change the current (assessment) policy.”
Farm bunk houses are used to house seasonal agricultural workers brought in by farmers from the Caribbean and Mexico to help with crop planting, growing and harvesting. The seasonal agricultural worker program requires farmers to provide housing for workers.
There are about 15,000 seasonal workers coming into Ontario annually. Schuyler estimates taxing existing bunkhouses at residential rates would add $50 to $60 per worker annually to farmers’ operation expenses. It will be an extra tax burden on farmers.
Gilroy says bunkhouses should be classified as farm because they’re used as farm buildings. They’re used for the purpose of growing food.
Federation president Bette Jean Crews agrees. Bunkhouses aren’t residences. “These are used for housing for, at the top, eight months out of the year for workers.”
McLean says it doesn’t make a difference that bunkhouses are only used to house workers for part of the year. Seasonal cottages are also classified residential, she points out. BF
Comments
McLean said cottage are seasonal and classified residential.
Trailers in trailer parks are occupied longer than agricultural bunkhouses but those seasonal residences are not taxed at all but use municipal services such as fire, ambulance, police, roads, etc.
Under the old system bunkhouses were taxed at a lower rate but at least taxes were assessed for seasonal services required by the occupants.
Baloney, trailers in my park were assessed 5 years ago and we have been paying through the nose ever since. They are are seasonally occupied and we pass the cost on.
That the farm community to want these bunkhouses to be taxed as farm buildings, begs the question as to whether the farm community sees farm workers as little more than cattle.
This, in turn, makes one wonder that if this is the perspective of the farm community, we really do need farm labour unions to protect workers from this type of mentality.
That's the tradeoff - if workers don't live in a residence, they need a union. The farm community can't have it both ways.
Suggesting that workers are little more than livestock when housed in tax-reduced bunkhouses shows complete ignorance of the situation.
A bunkhouse is just one classification of residence with an applied tax assessment rate.
What people like you need is more education on farm issues.
Any time bunkhouses are described as farm buildings, it still equates people with cattle. Cattle live in farm buildings, people live in houses.
I don't care what anyone says - if it's good enough for anyone to live in, it should be taxed as residential. It won't have as high an assessed value as a principal residence, but to call a bunkhouse a farm building is completely demeaning to the people living in it.
If you know ANYTHING about MPAC assessment and tax classifications, you would not be posting that junk.
Bunkhouses are taxed, always were, always will be. The argument is the level of taxation by classification.
Before you go on your irrational tangent about workers being treated like "livestock" by being housed in tax reduced residences, you should know that NO worker can be housed in those buildings unless it passes annual inspection by authorities such as the local health unit. There are strict rules to cleanliness, structural integrity, water testing, fire and safety codes, and a host of other items. If the unit does not pass, workers will be denied.
There are many social housing units occupied by the unfortunate that don't have the same enforcement teeth as what farmers face.
Stick with the taxation thread and stop diverting the story with an illusory motive.
I wouldn't want to tell my friends and my family that I live in what the farm community insists, for tax purposes, is a farm building, and neither would anyone else. If a building is good enough for people to live in, even seasonally, it should be taxed at the same residential tax rate that would be paid by any other residence of similar assessed value.
A bunkhouse is not a farm building, and never will be. It is a residence, and needs to be taxed as one. If farmers can't afford to pay residential taxes on the accomodation they provide for their workers, as well as be proud enough to call these buildings residences, instead of farm buildings, then I don't have any sympathy for those farmers, and neither should anyone else.
A bunkhouse is a building with bunk beds to be used as sleeping quarters for ranchers, farmers, remote hospitality workers, campers, military, etc.
Supplying a building to bunk temporary workers for only farm use makes such structures farm buildings. Not all farm structures are fit for livestock as you erroneously point out.
If MPAC thinks bunkhouses are fully-supplied, year-round residential use buildings, then it would be fair to assess church groups that supply bunkhouses for seasonal campers. The sleeping quarters for military should see an increase of taxation as their buildings would also be taxed at residential rates.
The real problem is some groups now supply fully-equipped, fully-supplied houses for temporary workers. These buildings may be used for purposes other than bunking migrate workers. Upgrading bunkhouses to full-fledged year-round housing is the argument.
Having a rudimentary knowledge of farming does not give you the right to make unprovoked belligerent remarks toward hard working farmers trying to keep their expenses in line.
Farmers can certainly do what they wish to control expenses. However when they claim that bunkhouses are used for the purposes of growing food, and therefore should be farm buildings, they've well-more than stepped over the line into patronizing, and demeaning,(and even belligerent) commentary about how they really feel about the people they have working for them.
I just don't understand the farm community on this issue. Something people live in, regardless for how long, and regardless of how well-furnished, is a residence, and, therefore, should be taxed as one. This is little more than just another example of the farm community clamoring to claim that - "we're farmers, the rules don't apply to us"
If it comes to belligerence, farmers should look in the mirror on this issue. I'm simply pointing out what, anyone can easily see, is a belligerent double-standard on the part of the farm community.
My truck has farm plates, does that mean that it is not fit to drive to the store ?
Of course not, it is simply a tax classification.
A bunk house is a bunk house is a bunk house regardless of the classification.
At the end of the day, we can have political correctness, and raise costs on the farm (and inflate the prices to cover the costs). Or we can accept that a rose by any other name ... is still a rose.
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