Draft: Why Toronto should transition to a new ‘cash allocation basis’ of accounting for budgets

Toronto’s published 2022 budget was ~$15.2B (from <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M66w3aTGfPgDHK2b3h9rd3NwzMCJVIBLSxPKh5F7J14/edit?usp=sharing" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">open data listing</a> — formal presentation was $15B), with equal revenues and expenditures balancing to $0 (zero). I’ve seen senior reporters and civil society members report to the public and their constituents that this budget represents the day-to-day costs of running the City, when in fact it includes much more than that with unconventional inclusions. Following is a rough* listing of these inclusions. For budgeted revenues if you take out <ul> <li>contributions from reserves of $602M and contributions from capital of $207M (from open data: <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M66w3aTGfPgDHK2b3h9rd3NwzMCJVIBLSxPKh5F7J14/edit?usp=sharing" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">source</a>; those aren’t revenues),</li> </ul> <a href="https://medium.com/@henrikbechmann/draft-why-toronto-should-transition-to-a-cash-allocation-basis-of-accounting-for-budgeting-96dbc80efa08">Click Here</a>