Understanding Your Property Tax Bill,
how it is calculated and how it relates to other tax bills in your neighbourhood and in neighbouring communities just might become increasingly important to you. The province has given the go-ahead to reassess every home in Ontario for your 2009 tax bill. Your 2009 tax bill will be calculated based on the assessed value of your home in January of 2008.
The Two Main Components
of your tax bill are the assessed value and the mill rate. The the mill rates that are applied are set by 3 different bodies while the assessment or assessed value is set by MPAC (Municipal Property Assessment Corporation).
The three taxing bodies
who benefit from the taxes you pay, are: 1-the Town/Township, 2 - the Region, and 3 - the Education System.
Your Tax Bill Is Calculated by multiplying the Mill Rate by the Assessed Value.
While those who support the current assessment process would have you believe it is fair and equitable, those who do not support it would wholeheartedly disagree.
We are not going to discuss assessment fairness today but rather the differences in the 2008 tax bill in 2 neighbouring communities, Uxbridge and Georgina.
Our example uses a home assessed at $300,000 in both communities. If you look at the charts and graph you will notice that the education mill rate and therefore the taxes are the same in both Communities. This is because the Province sets the education mill rate.
Uxbridge for several years in the past managed to maintain zero or near zero tax increases despite a growing community. Georgina on the other hand continued to increase their tax needs to the point where our sample home would pay $967.23 more than a property assessed the same in Uxbridge. That is more than double the Town/Township taxes in Uxbridge. The Regions, percentage wise, are much closer together but the difference of $669.03 found in Durham Region still eats into a good portion of that $967.23.
THE BOTTOM LINE - A home assessed at $300,000 in Georgina will pay $298.20 more in taxes this year than a home in Uxbridge.
NOTE 1 -Because Uxbridge is located in Durham Region and Georgina is located in York Region the delivery of services to each community may be allocated differently between the Region and the Community thus altering the amount of taxes required to deliver those services.
NOTE 2 -In a hamlet that straddles the boundary between Uxbridge and Georgina, identical homes across the street from each other may not have identical assessments because the process used by the 2 different assessment regions may not be identical. Likewise 2 identical homes located in different vicinities within, for example, Georgina will not necessarily be assessed the same.