FEE INCREASE FOR THE 2023/2024 FISCAL YEAR
The VSA conducts annual fee reviews each year as part of our mandate to recover costs and ensure we deliver on the mandate set by the Government. The BC Government mandate for the VSA as per our Administrative Agreement is: “To maintain and enhance consumer protection and consumer confidence within the motor dealer industry.”
It is important to note that only three fee increases (inclusive of this year) have been implemented over the past 15 years.
Fee increases pay for the direct costs of regulating the motor dealer industry, such as licensing, compliance inspections, complaint handling, education and enforcement activities. It also covers indirect costs like IT, finance, accounting, office maintenance, and insurance costs. In addition, our costs for regulating the industry have increased significantly due to increases in both the number and complexity of consumer and licensee inquiries. Further, as experienced by all businesses, labour costs and other costs such as property taxes have significantly increased.
As a result of all of these factors, the Fee Increase proposed in our January 5th Fee Review Bulletin has been approved and will take effect on April 1, 2023.
INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR FEES
Over the past year, we have embarked on several projects which will provide the industry with:
Our authority to set fees and our mandate to recover costs
The Motor Dealer Act gives us the legal authority to set fees to fund our operations. The government has tasked us with regulating and licensing the motor dealer industry and, we have authority to set licensing fees and other charges to cover the costs of doing so.
HOW FEES ARE DETERMINED AND WHAT THEY PAY FOR
We operate on a cost recovery basis. We receive no funding from the province of British Columbia. This means that the costs to license and regulate industry and provide trade practice regulation are primarily covered by licensing fees. In setting these fees, we allocate costs using several factors to determine the overall costs for us to operate. The factors that determine costs are broken down by the functions of our organization. Once these costs are determined, fees are developed so that projected revenues closely match our costs to regulate. Due to the uncertainty that the worldwide pandemic caused in the marketplace, we have used fact-based assumptions from our previous fee review and economic forecasting to allocate costs.
THE 2023/2024 FEE SCHEDULE BEGINS APRIL 1, 2023
