Quote:
Originally Posted by Derek Sutton
You Guys are not privy to the ****show down here in Lethbridge. We have the highest city taxes in AB. My property taxes have gone up over $1000 in the last seven years while the assessment is actually less then it was in 2009. This years total is just over $3800 up 3.5%.from 2015.
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I'm not saying the assessed value has nothing to do with your property tax bill, but there is no correlation between your assessment value's change, and your property tax bill's change. Your assessed value can go up, and your amount owing can go down. This happens when the budgeted revenue goes down, new supply enters the market (e.g. 200 unit condo tower would bring 200 new property tax paying owners), and/or other areas of your city had their property increase at a greater rate than yours did.
In Vancouver there are plenty of people who are complaining that their assessed value went up astronomically, but they don't say that the amount they owed only went up a small amount. They could reduce every assessment in half, and everyone would still pay the same amount, as they'd just increase the mill rate. It's a pretty simple formula.
Your bill went from $2,800 to $3,850 in 7 years. Assuming straight line increases of $150 each year (or $12.50/month), your payments are going up an average of 4.66% each year. In that time the Lethbridge total mill rate has averaged an increase of 3.74%.
This is the same in almost every city.