The City of Kamloops says the new health payroll tax announced in this week’s provincial budget will cost them in the long run.
City Finance Director Kathy Humphrey says the city stood to save about $800,000 with the elimination of the MSP but the new payroll tax will cost city coffers about a million dollars annually.
“For the city of Kamloops it was previously announced that the MSP costs to the city were going to be cut in half. So in our 2018 budget, we have budgeted for a savings of between 4 and 500,000 dollars. But with the new announcement just this week from the provincial budget, we are thinking that in 2019, the new health employers tax is going to cost us probably just over a million dollars.”
She says it is almost like robbing Peter to pay Paul.
“We don’t know all the details so obviously these are all preliminary estimates, but it seems to us that with the MSP, the other half of the MSP not dropping until 2020, we’ve got the health tax coming in in 2019 without the savings of the other half of the MSP.”
Humphrey says the city will examine the budget and work out the final cost.