Holyrood looking to find businesses operating off the tax rolls

By Craig Westcott/January 20, 2023

Holyrood council is revving up its efforts to identify all the existing businesses within its boundaries to make sure they are registered and paying taxes to the Town.

Deputy Mayor Michelle Woodford updated her colleagues last week on the work.

“We’re moving into Phase II implementation,” said Woodford. “We’re identifying businesses that are on CADO (the provincial government’s registry of Companies and Deeds Online) with a Holyrood address. We’re looking out at social media ads from home-based businesses. Both will receive letters for registration of their business as per our regulations.”

Councillor Steve Winsor said Woodford’s committee is doing really important work.

“What she described there is something that we really have to push hard on,” he said. 

Winsor said he recently spoke with a number of small business owners who expressed their views on the new budget.

“The feedback I had was, and no one wants anything to go up, but the feedback was, ‘Steve, I’m paying my share. It’s (the tax increase) making it harder for me and my profit margin. However, my competitors in the town, or other businesses in the town, are not paying their share.’ And the idea is that if everyone did pay their share correctly, maybe we wouldn’t have to be raising some of these fees, and maybe they could even be lowered,” Winsor said. “That’s the idea of it. But we have a quite a number of small businesses dodging that and it’s not fair to the registered business owners who are paying more than their share for the services in this town.”

Winsor said he fully agrees with the small business owners, and he also supports the efforts of Woodford’s committee.

“Well said, well articulated,” said Mayor Gary Goobie.