City administration may be looking into a new way to provide a $100 rebate to seniors in the city.
The rebate was originally attached to the province’s Alberta Seniors Benefit income subsidy, which no longer exists.
Assessment and Tax Manager for the City, Don Swant says the difficulty now is figuring out which seniors in the city are eligible for the rebate without the help of the province.
“Some of the difficulties that we would have are determining their incomes, and what the baseline will be, as the province has that information and we don’t. So for us now to determine who it is and who it’s not, we’ll have to set some guidelines.”
Administration initially recommended scrapping the rebate altogether.
However, the corporate services committee expressed that they would prefer to find a way to continue handing out the rebate, rather than doing away with the program out of inconvenience.
The province is now offering a tax deferral program instead.
Swant says there are about 430 seniors in the city who had been receiving the 100 dollar rebate.