Why are businesses leaving Toronto? The answer is the increase in taxes on all levels. Toronto is now listed as dead last on a recent list ranking entrepreneurial cities. The list of 96 cities has downtown Toronto in last place but the 905 Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is 33rd on the list. Most companies need to be close to the downtown core but can no longer cover the expenses involved with locating themselves downtown. One building had yearly property taxes between $4000 to $600 from 1992 to 2005 but was recently re-assessed and the owner now pays property taxes of $27 000. The only way for his business to survive was to was to move seven kilometres from where the business was located to a new location outside of the GTA where taxes were lower. Although there are still some new real estate projects coming into Toronto the numbers show that most businesses are finding their way out in to the surrounding area’s where the costs eat up less of their profits. That’s not to say that all businesses are leaving Canada’s largest city. In 1986 the inventory of office space in central Toronto was only 59.7 million square feet and now sits at 82.3 million square feet. Suburban commercial real estate was at 38.8 million square feet back in 1986 and now sits at 83.3 million square feet. The impact that the costs associated with down town are having on businesses is that more and more jobs are migrating to the suburbs and causing unemployment to go higher in Toronto than it is outside. Right now there is little confidence that the conditions will improve as Toronto’s spending just keeps increasing and is causing more of a need for greater taxes. Even though Toronto is known as a central high profile location it only did well on 1 factor in the entire survey which is its diversity of business section. But how does that help the local businesses bottom line?
