Salt Spring Island daycare retains property tax exemption in assessment appeal
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A daycare on Salt Spring Island has won the right to keep its property tax exemption in a recent decision by B.C.'s Property Assessment Appeal Board.
A daycare on Salt Spring Island has won the right to keep its property tax exemption in a recent decision by B.C.'s Property Assessment Appeal Board.
The Gulf Islands Early Learning Society, which operates Salt Spring Early Learning Centre on Drake Road, challenged its 2022 property assessment, arguing that the two lots that make up the centre had been incorrectly classified.
The non-profit society told the board its properties should have been exempt from taxation under the provincial Taxation (Rural Area) Act, while the assessor argued that neither lot met the act's criteria for an exemption.
In his Oct. 24 decision on the matter, PAAB panel chair Howard Kushner concluded that the assessor was wrong about the lot on which the daycare's heritage building stands, though he declined to extend the exemption to the adjacent, vacant lot used as a play yard by the daycare.
The crux of the issue was the act's requirement properties owned, occupied and exclusively used by non-profit societies be used for "activities that are of a demonstrable benefit to all members of the community where the land is located."
The assessor argued that the property's use as a daycare did not provide a benefit to every member of the Salt Spring community.
"But that is not the test," Kushner's decision reads.
