Victoria County legislators want to get rid of tax reductions for seasonal businesses, instead preferring to offer those tax reductions to businesses that stay open all year-round.

They say those taxes should be incentivizing businesses to stay open rather than close prematurely.

Right now, the tax reductions are costing the county about $130,000 a year. It’s designed to help businesses that are closed for at least four months of the year get a 25 per cent rebate on their taxes.

This isn’t a new idea for Victoria County: John MacDonell, Minister of Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, requested the Seasonal Tourist Business Tax Designation, which was first implemented in 2004, be changed from mandatory to optional in 2011. Mark Furey, Minister of Municipal Affairs once again brought up the issue 2 years ago. Nothing was changed.

Victoria County in trouble

Getting rid of the tax reductions may be putting Victoria County legislators at odds with the very people they want to help.

And help, they may need. According to the latest census data pulled from 2011, Victoria County has the highest unemployment rate in the entire province. Almost a quarter of the people living in Victoria County are unemployed.

Here it is mapped with ArcGIS:

On top of that, a person living in Victoria County will, on average, work only 33 weeks out of the year. In comparison, a person in Halifax will work an average of 45 weeks in a given year. That means a person in Halifax will work 36 per cent more in a year than someone living in Victoria County.

Seasonal work

Pauline Davis, Director of Taxation for Victoria County’s Municipal Office has a rather simple explanation. “Most of the work here is seasonal,” said Davis.

But if most of the economy in Victoria County is based on seasonal business, why get rid of a tax reduction that is going to help them out?

Davis doesn’t see it that way – she thinks the tax reductions aren’t beneficial to the county economy. “It doesn’t help to keep businesses open,” said Davis. “I mean, it helps them with their taxes, but it doesn’t give that incentive to stay open all year round.

It’s more the incentive to close.”

Businesses speak out

Numerous seasonal businesses within Victoria County have expressed the exact opposite of what Davis is saying.

Sheila Van Chaick of Bird Island Boat Tours, a company that’s been around for over 40 years, said the tax reductions “didn’t have anything to do with the decision making” of closing down for the year.

“You can’t really run a boat tourism business in the winter anyway,” Van Chaick said. “We were going to close, tax deduction or not.”

To Van Chaick, it’s more of an added bonus than anything else. “It save’s you a few bucks, and small businesses are hard to keep open anyway.”

Another local business owner, Sharon Harrison from Lantern Hill & Hollow, an inn near Ingonish, expressed similar thoughts on the tax reduction. “It’s not that big of a factor,” said Harrison. “Would I deliberately close down because of this and not stay open year-round? No.”

But Pauline Davis said it wasn’t always like this – businesses used to not close down before the tax reduction. When the legislation was designed years ago, “the businesses did stay open all year round and they didn’t think anything different,” said Davis.

“For the last 20 years… they do their thing from May until the end of October and then everything shuts down.”

For now, the tax reductions will remain in place, but research and investigation into the matter is still ongoing.