Comment on the MAT tax | Letters

Editor’s note: The following is a letter regarding the Municipal Accommodation Tax being considered by the Township of Lake of Bays.

To start, I’m a tourist resort operator and a local resident. 

So here are some thoughts about this MAT tax.

Historically tourism has always started off with a site that was somehow desirable to visit and most often this was because of some natural feature of the surroundings. An obvious example, Niagara Falls, is there, not because of some government funded advertising campaign or tax regimen, or even because of some economic development committee working to promote the area. 

All this came later. 

The reason Niagara Falls is there, believe it or not, is because there is a lot of water falling over a cliff and it is fairly unique in the area and big and really cool to look at.  From the time humans first discovered it to the present this is the main reason the town exists and why people visit. It doesn’t hurt that engineers found a way to make electricity from this falling water and the first significant electric generation and transmission systems in the world started right in Niagara Falls. 

Tourism came second and we “enhanced” the experience with stores, hotels, amusements and lately Casinos that make a good profit from humanity’s desire to recreate.  It is not all bad. A lot of working people make a good living out of Niagara Falls today.  

Similarly, Muskoka has a feature unique, not just to Ontario, but to a fair extent to the World. We sit on top of some of the oldest, most stable rock on the planet, carved by nature into thousands of lakes, rivers and a varied habitat for lots of cool animals and all still relatively clean and unspoiled. Muskoka’s main claim to fame is that we are less than a day’s easy drive to about 50 million people, all of whom live in city environments that they wish to leave behind periodically for a break from the crowds and work. Using just their family car these people can go from the hustle, bustle, noise and pollution of their city environment, to sitting with a beer on the dock watching the kids play in the water. The loudest noise being some bird or the wind in the tree leaves and water so clean that in most cases you can just take it from the lake and drink it.

Now going back to the MAT tax

• Nobody has demonstrated a “need” for this tax.
• As a business sector we already have several groups working to promote out interests. Muskoka Tourism, Resorts of Ontario, Explorer’s Edge (RTO 12 and if anyone knows about this but the insiders I’d be amazed.) 
• One politician commented, off the record, that “we can make a lot of money out of this tax” but this in itself hardly justifies a new tax. If they are truly in a “cash crunch” they should first look to potential savings in their operations, ask if all the stuff they do is really necessary or maybe just a doubling up on another level of government. If they truly need more funds, increase the general taxation of everybody in the township as they all benefit.
• Nobody had explained how this tax is to be fairly collected. There is, for example, no way to ask operations such as Air B&B to provide a list of clients, rentals and amounts, which is what the municipality would need as a bare minimum to ensure compliance for private short-term rentals.
• Nobody seems to know exactly what to do with this tax. I’ve heard of funding the Dwight library renovation, or rebuilding highway 117 and neither of these items seems to me to fit the criteria of being “tourism related” at all. Roads we already have funding via the Province, district and local taxes. A library, though a nice addition to any community should not be funded by a special tax on tourists.
• It feels to me like this MAT tax is sort of cherry-picking low fruit when applied to small resorts. We can’t hide, our advertising to attract tourist sort of guarantees this fact. 
• If the tax is to be (for some inexplicable reason) applied to “tourist accommodation” for the benefit of our municipality then why is it that campsites are not to be taxed?
• If the tax is to benefit all tourism dependent business, then why is it not applied to all the restaurants, marinas, golf courses, gift shops, landscapers and construction contractors, etc. that everyone knows make most of their money from tourists to the area. 

Nothing about this tax makes good sense to me. At least not the way it is proposed at present.

I think the MAT tax was started to try to capture and control the private cottage rentals, which most agree is now a significant issue but the way this is proposed to date it will not do this well, if indeed at all.

Running private individual cottages like resorts in areas zoned as “residential” is simply wrong and not legal right from the start, tax or no tax.

Adding a tax to a few, select, easy to find, local businesses on the pretext of adding something tangible to their business is simply vapourware. A day dream at best. A financial burden that decreases business success probabilities. 

Applying that same tax in a careless, uneven and unenforceable manner to private cottage rentals is not fair either.

The whole thing needs to be totally rethought if it is to be used at all. 

If you agree please pass this on. 

If you don’t, please add a comment with explanations why I’m wrong and where and provide a better solution suggestion than what is before me now.

Brian Tapley

Lake of Bays

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