Memo to Toronto City Hall: You can’t have it both ways.
You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
Toronto is soon to experience the phenomenon that is Taylor Swift, bringing literally several hundred thousand fans together for six shows over 10 days.
Money, money, money and the city says it will get none of it.
Mayor Olivia Chow posted, “If Taylor Swift comes — the HST alone is high. We don’t get a penny of it. It’s great for the economy, but in terms of revenue, we actually end up paying out instead of getting any of that benefit. If I could get one cent of what Taylor Swift is generating in Toronto, oh my God, I would have done it yesterday.”
Perhaps she meant 1%.
What about the hotel tax? Doesn’t that 6% mean anything?
Maybe. Maybe not.
The GTA has 44,180 rooms with 16,788 in the downtown area. All are likely to be booked at capacity and a lot of them at increased rates. Historically, Toronto’s hotels might expect to be 75% filled in November.
So the city collects 100% of the hotel tax on the additional 25% of rooms booked due to Swift and tax on the increased room rates on the rest of them.
Rooms are reportedly going for up to 10 times the regular rate. As a “back of the envelope” calculation, even at $400 a room for downtown only — much less than reported — over 10 days, that is over $4 million in tax.
That is a tax benefit, I argued on X, while others told me the city doesn’t get that money.
I am told technically it goes to Tourism Toronto, which is owned by the hotel association as an independent destination marketing agency. That seems like a city benefit, marketing the city to tourists, but if they want to claim it doesn’t go directly into city coffers, backing Chow’s poorhouse argument, OK.
Many will agree. But here is why I say they can’t have it both ways.
If the city has no way to collect off the economic engine that is Swift, they have to live with the same argument when the World Cup rolls its ball into town in 2026.
In both cases, the province and the federal government stand to rake in beaucoup bucks. The HST will be enormous in both cases.
In the case of Swift, she didn’t demand a bribe. She didn’t make the city rebuild the Rogers Centre.
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FIFA, the corrupt controlling entity in the soccer world, tuned us up for an admitted $380 million. That number could rise because as you know government likes to dribble the disappointment out in drabs. The original estimate was less than $50 million.
The city went ahead under the notion that the feds and the province would jump to their demand and it didn’t happen. The province came in with $97 million and the feds with $104 million. That leaves Toronto admittedly short about $180 million so far.
A desperate additional hotel tax dedicated to the World Cup over 14 months — which makes non-soccer people pay for over a year — is expected to bring in $57 million.
Oops. Still way short. With a desperate tax to cover for failure.
Because, after all, the city gets nothing out of it.