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Toronto, Grande Prairie Have Canada's Most Expensive Property Tax And Utility Charges
by Jim Adair
A survey of 25 Canadian cities conducted by the City of Edmonton says that Montreal has the highest property taxes but the lowest utility charges of the cities surveyed. Add the two charges, and Grande Prairie, Alta. has the highest combined cost. The least expensive city is Victoria. The survey, by Edmonton chief economist Jong Huang, is conducted annually "to assess the relative burden on Edmonton homeowners," says the report. It uses a sample home for the survey that is representative of the largest number of houses in the Edmonton Region -- a home described as "25 to 30 years old, a single-detached, three-bedroom bungalow, with a main floor area of 1,200 square feet, having a double-car garage and finished full basement, on a 6,000-square-foot lot in an average neighbourhood of the city." Using this example, the lowest property taxes in the country, based on 2003 figures, are in Medicine Hat, Alta., at $1,409. The highest taxes are in Montreal at $2,887. But Montreal finances utilities such as water, sewer and garbage collection through its property taxes, so when residential utility charges are calculated, Montreal is the cheapest in the country, while Grande Prairie, Alta. is the most expensive. The Alberta city has the highest power charges of all the cities surveyed. When the average property tax of all single-detached homes is calculated, Toronto homeowners pay the most at $3,473, followed by Ottawa at $3,263. Homeowners in St. John's, Nfld. pay the smallest average property tax at $1,270. Only 16 cities provided information to calculate the median property tax rates, the number at which half pay more and half pay less. Medicine Hat came in with the lowest rate at $1,315, while Ottawa had the highest median tax rate at $2,980. The survey also compared the cities in terms of total property taxes per person. In this calculation, Vancouver has the lowest total property tax per person at $734, followed by St. John's at $742 and Medicine Hat at $796. Toronto has the highest tax per person at $1,886, followed by Victoria at $1,660 and Ottawa at $1,605. Huang says Edmonton's total property tax for the sample single-detached house was 18 per cent lower than the Canadian average of $2,066 in 2003. The total annual utility charge of $1,919 in Edmonton was 32 per cent higher than the Canadian average of $1,452 -- again, largely due to high hydro costs. Some western cities such as Edmonton, Calgary, and Surrey, B.C. also have a land drainage levy in addition to other utility charges. Huang says that property tax differences are a useful measurement of the comparative tax burden to homeowners, but "it is inappropriate to use property tax information contained in this report to compare management efficiency among municipal governments." He says there are many factors that create property tax differences among municipalities, including "the structure and sources of municipal governments' operating revenues, the levels and costs of services provided, the use of split mill rates, different ways for financing local improvements, and the extent the user pay policy is applied." With a federal election expected in Canada this spring, Canada's cities have been pushing the government to provide more money to assist with infrastructure. During the last decade, many services previously paid for by the federal and provincial governments have been downloaded onto the cities, which have been forced to raise property taxes to pay for the services. Recently the mayors of the 10 largest urban areas in the country got together to form a strategy for dealing with the federal government to get financial help. Some of the solutions discussed include sharing the federal gas tax or providing municipalities with a break on the Goods and Services Taxes. Prime Minister Paul Martin has promised a "new deal for cities" is in the works, and this week, Finance Minister Ralph Goodale told the Toronto Board of Trade that only health care is a more pressing priority for the federal government. The Toronto Board of Trade recently launched an advertising campaign to lobby for more money for the city, called "Toronto Needs a Real Solution. Enough of Not Enough." |
