Tax Talk Returns to Council Chambers
Friday, April 12, 2013 @ 4:15 AM
Prince George, B.C. – City of Prince George Council’s “Committee of the Whole” will meet on Monday evening in an effort to fine tune the options for the tax rate for Council’s final approval.
There are three options on the table and each is based on the 2013 assessed value of a “representative home”. That subject property had an assessed value last year of $214,411 dollars and paid $1,671 in property taxes. This year, that same property is assessed at $218,007 dollars.
The three options to be considered by the Committee of the Whole have very slight variations:
Option 1:
Reflects 3.5% tax levy increase. Would mean “representative” residential property would pay $7.93535 per thousand dollars of assessment. That means the representative property would pay $1,730, up from the $1,671 paid last year. Major industry tax rate would drop from $46.88 per thousand to $46.00 per thousand.
Light Industrial, Business and Farm tax rates would decrease by 4.64%.
Utility tax rate would decrease by 2.61%.
Option 2:
Reflects 3.4% tax levy increase for representative residential property, so 2013 taxes on that property would be $1,728.00 ( or $7.92747 per thousand dollars of assessment)
Under this option, decreases for Major Industry and Utility tax rates are the same as in Option 1, but Light Industrial, Business and Farm tax rates would decrease by 4.49%.
Option 3:
Reflects 3.4% tax levy increase for representative residential property, so 2013 taxes on that property would be $1,728.00 the same as in option #2.
Under this option, the Major Industry tax rate is reduced from $46.88/thousand in 2012 to $46.30/thousand in 2013. The Utility class tax rate decrease is the same as in Option #1. The Light Industrial, Business and Farm classes tax rates would decrease by 4.75%.
The meeting starts at 6 p.m.
Comments
Does anyone know how our property tax rates compare to other cities in the province? I just purchased a new home in town, and after looking around some areas were around $6000/year.
What area in town is 6000/year?
New 600,000 dollar house area.
Why is industry taxes going down ! Industry taxes should be going up! Their trucks are hardest on our roads!
I agree NoWay. Industry must use City infrastructure more than the single residence.
Don’t fall into the spin doctors B.S. Remember to add the $72 per month we are charged by our city gods that other communities like Kamloops don’t pay when you are comparing tax’s.
There is something missing from this information because it doesn’t make sense. If the rate is going up 3.5% and residential assessments are approximately half of the valyation, how can all those rates go down without others go up much higher than 3.5%?
Same thing every year. Prince George is a pretty good place to live except for our disgustingly high taxes and awful leadership by city council. It’s so frustrating to read about these fools and their ridiculous ideas and solutions. Our taxes go up again but wait until next year, it will be the same. I can’t wait for this horrible mayor to get blasted in the next civic election.
We also must factor into this tax increase the recent 26% increase to utilities, while it is not a tax it is a user fee and another way to get more of your money to help pay for services the City has done a poor job of maintaining, improving and delivering with the tax dollars it already collects. The Core review findings were supposed to result in savings, more efficient delivery of services and prioritized spending but so far no worthwhile results there. I thought Mayor Green ran and won the Mayor’s seat on the promise of lowering taxes, and not just for industry!
its coming start practising your bending over
If they keep raising or taxes with little or no effort to drive out inefficiencies I suggest we change the name to “Committee of a hole” ;)
Oil, go to the city website of say Naniamo, Kamloops, Redeer AB. These are cities comparable in population to PG. They all Have a link “calculate my taxes”. Enter the asseded value of your hame and bingo the tax you pay will come up.
This tax calculator is a feature that the city of PG does not have. I guess they do not want to give out to much information. It is in fact quite difficult to get information from their website about the Budget. The webmaster loads it down with irrelivent info like BS baffles brains.
Cheers
It’s just a friggin’ game.
North Bay, Ontario. City about the size of PG. Snow, etc. etc.
House listed at $650,000 … taxes shown at $6,300.
http://propertyguys.com/property/index/id/68477
Lethbridge Alberta. Similar sized house, not as much snow, by far. Province a bit more generous with assistance to Cities than BC is.
House listed at $600,000 ⦠taxes shown as $5,506.00
http://www.homefinder.ca/listings/724161-122-stonecrest-point-w-lethbridge-alberta-ld0009571
Any more questions about our high taxes?
Now, what I would like to see is how our services are compared from a standard of quality point of view as well as additional service costs.
BTW, under option 1, city taxes on $600,000 = $4,761.
Then the school, regional district and northern health taxes go on top of that. I do not know what that will add up to.
The realty pages will show the sum of all those extra taxes. In the case of North Bay, for instance, the only tax on top of the municipal tax is the school tax. However, the municipal tax may have the other two cost sharing potential included as part of their budgets.
One would really have to do quite a bit of digging in each case to get a true comparison.
This story only gives part of the information and it would be nice to have the whole picture. Tax rates are only one part of the calculation and it is only relevant when assessed values are factored in. Rates can go down and actual taxes paid still go up if assessments increase.
A better story would be on who is footing the bill (% paid by each tax class) and how does that compare to previous years. This council has been shifting the total tax bill to average homeowners so they can give big industry and business a break. The special interest groups need their compensation I suppose.
Despite a very expensive ad campaign that promised reduced spending, the bottom line is this Mayor and Council have once again increased spending and jacked up our taxes. Over their two years in office they have increased taxes by nearing 8% which is a far cry from the promised 10% cut but memories of past election promises fade fast.
You are absolutely right Mitch2. The information can be dug out … but that is the problem, we all have to do our hoemwork through BC piles before we hit paydirt. We do not get paid for this. Administration does.
Business pays one of the lowest taxes in BC. Industry pays probably about an average, but many of the plants are within the City limits, thus they likely pay a higher proportion on a total assesment basis than many other cities in BC.
What the profiles of the division of the classes is between PG and others, I do not know. It is the type of info I assume we will eventually get from the Municipal Auditor General.
One would think that UBCM as well as the federal organization would provide us with some useful info. But ut seems it is an organization which cares more about itself than about the people their members serve.
A reasonable person would think that they would be interested in standardizing measuring for comparative analysis.
How many of us are liking in 600,000.00 homes in PG? What is the assesed value of your house Gus? Would you like me to guess?Why are we always looking to Northbay ON or Lethbridge AB when Reddeer has about as much snow as we do.
Our home is assesed at $234,000.00 and our taxes were $2200.00 and is it realy the taxes we should worry about or is it more important on how our tax dollars are spent?
Tell us Gus you know every f***ing thing. BS baffles brains.
Cheers
standardizing measuring for comparative analysis.
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Theres good one what the hell does it mean?
cheers
Time for your medication Retired 02!
It seems that it does not take BS to baffle your brain:P
If it ever quits snowing you can return to your summer pass time of chasing kids off the lawn(along with dragon)
“How many of us are liking in 600,000.00 homes in PG?” Some are even living in them.
Quite a few actually. Quick check of BC assessment and there are a couple of dozen along North Nechako alone.
“standardizing measuring for comparative analysis”
When measuring the weight of a person one can take the weight without clothes on or with clothes on. That is two measurement methods,
When one want to compare the weight of one person to another it makes a lot of sense to not mix the two methods. In fact, one gets more accurate results when one measures all without clothes.
“Our home is assesed at $234,000.00 and our taxes were $2200.00 and is it realy the taxes we should worry about or is it more important on how our tax dollars are spent?”
So, here it goes with making sure we are not comparing apples to cumquats.
1. is the tax just for the municipality or does it include SD57, NH, RDFFG?
2. is the tax after deduction for BC homeowner grant and seniors’ grant?
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I also do not worry about the amount of tax since I know that we have relatively low taxes. BUT, we also have relatively low quality and quantity of services. I do not enjoy living in a dump.
02:
If you decide to test the “standardizing measuring for comparative analysis” theory Please Please do your neighbourhood a favor and close the curtains first.
Just for kicks, here is a summary of what my estimated taxes will be for 2013 here in Ottawa. This is on an assessed value for property tax purposes of $283,250 (the assessed value is $320,000 but they do a 4 year phase in so I won’t pay taxes based on the $320,000 until 2016):
Municipal taxes: 1,473.65
Ottawa Police Services: 439.61
Capital Tax Levy: 0.00
Conservation Authority Levy: 18.69
Transit Zone Taxes: 472.09
Fire Services: 255.64
Solid Waste/Garbage: 93.00
Education: 587.80
Total: $3,340.48
This doesn’t include water costs and I pay roughly $600 a year for that so if you want to add that in, you are looking at basically $4,000 per year. I would suggest that home prices in the area I live are probably 10-20% higher than PG for a “comparable” home but that’s just an estimate and there are obviously allot of factors there.
One interesting thing about here is that when I get my final bill, I see the total amount I paid broken down into the following categories (percents are based on my 2012 bill):
– Provincial Education (17.59)
– Provincial Mandatory Programs (10.38)
– Conservation Authorities (0.56)
– Transit (14.12)
– Police (13.15)
– Capital Financing (9.58)
– Roads and Traffic (8.32)
– Fire (7.65)
– General Administration (6.08)
– Parks/Recreation/Culture (4.80)
– Garbage/Recycling (3.96)
– Library (1.90)
– Paramedics (1.51)
– Planning/Economic Dev/Environment (0.40)
I can say that without any hesitation, that services in Ottawa are far and away better than services in PG. Not even comparable. PG does have better tap water, but that’s about it, LOL.
At the end of the day, I’d suggest that you get what you pay for . . .
Prince George = 216cm
http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Canada/British-Columbia/snowfall-annual-average.php
Red Deer = 116 cm
http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Canada/Alberta/snowfall-annual-average.php
Both are from the same web site which likely uses the same source for its data.
BTW, Albertaâs cities are primarily located on the prairies which are known to have some of the lowest precipitations in Canada other than the southern part of the interior of BC. It looks like one has to go to Banff to get a comparable snowfall.
North Bay = 273cm
http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Canada/Ontario/snowfall-annual-average.php
Red Deer $560,000 house, taxes = $3,825
url]http://www.realestateinreddeer.com/office-listings-mls/?gclid=CJHS84WGxrYCFYF7QgodSUYAuQ#idle[/url]
They seem to have some butt ugly houses in that price range ⦠much the same as some of the ones here. :-)
lonesome sparrow …. LOL!!!!
02 was right gus, Prince George and Red Deer get almost EXACTLY the same amount of snow, only a single digit difference!
Well, if one were to add them up 116=8 and 216=9 …..
Therefore PG gets only 1/8 more snow than RD ….. not even worth bothering about … ;-)
I wonder how much carbon tax those home owners in Ottawa have to pay?? You could probably also factor in the surplus charges we pay to govt through ICBC too.
It is pretty hard to compare between PG and Ottawa when obviously we live under vastly different tax structures.
Hi Jim13135,
Yes, it is hard to do a direct comparison, which is why I thought I would restrict it to the core property taxes.
I don’t believe there are carbon taxes in the fuel here, but gas prices are pretty similar to PG. Income taxes in Ontario are higher than BC, but car insurance is way less. Utilities are similar and food is probably a bit cheaper on average.
The big thing that is relevant, at least IMHO, is the fact that I pay much higher property taxes here in Ottawa than what I would in PG for a similar home BUT the services are also MUCH better. At the end of the day, if you want good services somebody has to pay for them.
Cheers!
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