Kapuskasing has officially put the wheels in motion on a new municipal power.
Council once again discussed the Municipal Transient Accommodation Tax, or better known as Hotel tax, and whether or not to implement it into their community.
Mayor Dave Plourde says on a night where they decided to join a tourism-centered project involving snowmobiling, this seemed to go hand in hand with that decision.
Originally, back in July former Mayor Alan Spacek spoke on the tax saying the power given to single-tier and lower-tier municipalities to apply the new sales tax was a positive.
In the end, Spacek said it be best to reach out to major hotel owners within the area to sit down and chat about the structure of implementing such a tax before moving forward.
Following this being done over the course of the past six months, Mayor Dave Plourde and current council has now sat down again to discuss the Hotel Tax and have come to a decision that they will be implementing the tax beginning in July of 2019.
Plourde says this gives them another avenue for drawing people to the community.
“We’re looking for a mechanism that would allow us to provide a coordinator or something coordinated to draw people to our community and I think this is an avenue that would allow us to do that. I think it really facilitates organizing events in our community and I think its something that is needed.”
He says they would simply be doing what many big city hotels have done for years to improve their local attractions.
“It’s not coming from our taxpayers its from outside, its being done all around us. I mean for years we have been paying tax when we visit Toronto Hotels to subsidize their local tourism attractions so I mean we are just mimicking exactly what they are doing.”
Fellow local municipalities such as Hearst have decided to implement the tax and communities such as Cochrane have been considering implementing the hotel tax for almost a full year.
The tax will be implemented beginning this coming summer and introduced over a three year period starting at a rate of two per cent the first year, three per cent the second and finally four per cent the third. Following that the tax will remain at four per cent moving forward.
