Property Tax Appeal Deadline Looming
It’s been a pretty aggravating property tax season for many New Brunswickers, with the province admitting to assessment errors on 2,400 properties and others experiencing big or unexplainable increases.
Though those falling under the admitted assessment errors will receive an apology letter and be given more time to appeal, everyone else has until tomorrow, Friday March 30, to file an appeal. This includes non-residential and commercial property owners.
Shawn Peterson, founder of Propertize.ca, a website that uses open data to track property tax assessments year-to-year, says campsite owners and landlords were hit particularly hard with increases this year.
“The campgrounds have been a big one in terms of the size of the assessment increases and also the apartment buildings too that have seen pretty sizeable jumps,” says Peterson. “They fall under a tax class that ends up with them paying a whole lot extra. A 10 per cent increase is bad enough, but when it’s combined with a big levy to go with it, it makes for a big tax bill.”
Peterson has been running Propertize since 2011. He says it’s hard to say that 2017 has been the worst year ever for assessment increases, but does say government admitting there were errors was a first for him.
“The one thing I will say is I don’t recall a time I’ve ever been doing this or paying attention to this that there’s been the admission that there’s a problem and letters going out. I don’t remember that ever happening before. That’s interesting.”’ he says.
He has also noticed a few other things he personally considers “strange” within the data. For instance, he says there are over 2,600 assessments in 2017 that are above what they sold for in 2016 within 10 per cent.
“We keep talking about how the system is supposed to really be based on market values, but at the time, every time you’re looking at sales, that doesn’t quite match up to that. So when I hear the admission that they found 2,400 problems, I say ‘well what about these other 2,600 houses that are assessed over what they sold for. Should they have to appeal?’” Peterson says.
“To me, I find there is not enough being done to find and fix these problems before the bills go out. It’s good to see that they found some that were wrong, but I would probably suggest that there is a lot more wrong that isn’t really being talked about or looked at.”
Whether you’re a residential property owner or business, Peterson says it’s important to educate yourself on your assessment.
“It doesn’t really matter where you fall in the chain of property ownership in the province. Whether you’re renting, whether you’re leasing, it doesn’t matter,” he says. “You’re being affected by it at some point in time. It’s really important that everyone just takes much more time to look at their assessment.”
Peterson also suggests comparing your assessments in previous years to see if there are any trends or changes to spot any anomalies. He also suggests comparing with comparable properties and recent sales in your area. This will give you a good sense of what’s happening in the area of your property.
“So you are finding problems because nobody else is looking out for you. That’s the thing to really emphasize is I do not think enough is being done to find and fix these before the bills go out,” say Peterson. “The problem is the onus is on your to find and fix these problems yourself. Ultimately that means filing an appeal because there’s no guarantee you’re included in that 2,400 number.”
In other words, if you think there’s an issue and you haven’t received an apology letter from the government yet, it’s time to get filing. Until the systems changes, Peterson says it’s up to citizens to look out for themselves.
“It doesn’t matter if there were 1000 appeals or 10,000 appeals, I think the important thing is we make sure the assessments are as good as possible. The systems aren’t changing overnight. There are a lot of really great ideas out there around things we can do to make it more based on reality or provide some more faith or belief in the system, but that’s not happening overnight,” he says.
“I think it’s really important for people if they have any questions or they are unsure that they submit an appeal to make sure that it’s looked at by a real human being assessor and they’re not falling into some automated machine calculation on whatever the parameters are that might not make any sense or be realistic.”