Property Tax time
Property assessment and tax bills were sent out at the beginning of March here in New Brunswick. Property tax time inspires people and journalists to pay a lot of attention to tax rates and assessments.
I too am going to weigh in on these issues.
First, I hear a lot of people talking about appealing their assessments. If people feel their assessment is higher than the value of their property, appealing can be the right decision. The problem is, many folks want to appeal their assessment because of high taxes – not because of an inaccurate assessment. Just because assessments have gone up – even if they go up a lot – if the assessed value is not more than the property is worth (i.e. what it could sell for) appealing probably won’t benefit a home owner.
Now that assessments are getting higher people are being shown more acutely the importance of their tax rate. Now that tax bills are higher due to higher assessed values, it is increasingly important for municipalities (and the province) to control and possibly decrease tax rates.
2 comments:
You can check out the assessed value of other homes (such as your neighbours) on the Service New Brunswick website:
https://www.planet.snb.ca/ANONDB/anon002$.startup
One issue with measuring assessments against your neighbours' is that the assessment law doesn't depend on equity, but on market value. If you, and your neighbours are under assessed, their assessments will not be strong enought evidence for an appeal - the best evidence is the sales prices of similar properties.
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