Province to review property taxes for Saskatchewan daycares

The Saskatchewan government will take a look at the ad hoc approach to charging daycares property tax in our province.

Currently there is no consistency; some daycares pay nothing, others are charged residential rates and some pay massive commercial rates.

This year alone some daycares have faced more than a $10,000 jump in annual property taxes because of reassessments done in Regina.

Provincial legislation currently exempts all school buildings from paying property tax but not daycares. That is left to the individual municipalities to decide.

“We’ll be taking a look at that but that’s where is stands at the moment,” explained John Edwards, executive director of policy and program services at the Ministry of Government Relations.

Daycare operators would like to be included in that province-wide exemption.

Daycares are opening in all of the new nine joint-use schools being built in the province, none of which will pay taxes, allowing the unfairness in property tax application to continue.

Lynn Allan is assistant deputy minister at the Ministry of Education and is echoing the commitment to take a look at this.

“We’ll look at the options and work with operators and municipalities on the issue.”