February 10, 2025

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Tank: Sask. braces for property assessment with higher prices

Tank: Sask. braces for property assessment with higher prices

Saskatchewan’s outdated and inaccurate approach to assessing property value for tax purposes has been deemed ‘more unfair to taxpayers’ than others in Canada.

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Every four years, Saskatchewan residents receive sometimes crushing reminders about the province’s unfair and outdated system to assess property values for tax purposes.

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And, if the past is any indication, the provincial government will remain silent, perhaps recalling the bitter and long-simmering tax revolt that culminated in 2006 when 150 rural municipalities withheld the education portion of property taxes to force relief and reform. Change always angers someone.

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Nowadays, Premier Scott Moe has essentially pronounced that it’s OK to decline to pay your taxes if you think they’re unfair, with his government’s decision to withhold the despised federal carbon tax on some home heating.

It will be interesting to hear his response if some rural or urban municipalities decide to stage a similar tax revolt over reassessed values — although there’s no indication such a skirmish is brewing. Then again, few have seen their updated property assessment.

During the last reassessment cycle four years ago, real estate prices had dropped, which represented bad news if you wanted to sell property, but good news for buyers and for assessing value to determine the amount of property tax you pay. A lower assessed value means lower taxes than a higher value.

But now, amid a housing crisis, home prices have soared due to limited supply, increasing the likelihood your property value will have increased and a higher assessed value will likely mean higher property taxes.

Yet, because Saskatchewan’s property assessment regime is just that antiquated and inaccurate, the reassessed value on which you will be paying your property taxes for the next four years is based not on the current value, but on the assessed value on Jan. 1, 2023 — more than two years ago.

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The assessed value that determined your property taxes up until now was set on Jan. 1, 2019.

In Saskatoon, for example, according to statistics from the Canadian Real Estate Association, the average house price increased from $286,800 in January of 2019 to $364,900 in January of 2023. (The average Saskatoon price climbed above $400,000 for the first time last year, before declining.)

But the increase in average price from the last assessment to the most recent one — if you can call two years ago recent — rings in at a whopping 27 per cent.

Before you plan a trip to city hall or the legislature and start making placards, your property taxes will likely not increase by the same degree as your property’s assessed value. The mill rate used to calculate property taxes is designed to spread the pain around.

A higher assessed value, however, means higher property taxes.

And some businesses in Saskatoon’s Riversdale neighbourhood were walloped with crippling assessment increases as high as 65 per cent in 2021 based on alleged values prior to the pandemic as these businesses struggled to recover from the health crisis.

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That same year the assessed value of commercial properties rose about eight per cent citywide, while the value of residential properties dropped seven per cent.

Surely there must be a better way than a system so ridiculous it sounds like it was cooked up for a Monty Python skit.

The Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association commissioned a study that was completed two years ago by the International Property Tax Institute that urged an overhaul of the system, concluding Saskatchewan’s approach was “more unfair to taxpayers” than others in Canada.

Among its recommendations were changing the way values are assessed to ensure they truly reflect reality; shortening the time between assessments to two years to start; moving the assessment date closer to the reassessment year; and reforming the appeals system.

These basic, sensible changes reflect what happens elsewhere in Western Canada. British Columbia and Alberta assess values every year, while Manitoba does it every two years.

So are these common-sense changes likely? The Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency, the independent body charged with implementing the property assessment system, says on its website: “SAMA provides a stable, up-to-date property assessment system for Saskatchewan.”

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That’s the exact same statement I mocked four years ago.

Phil Tank is the digital opinion editor at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

[email protected]

twitter.com/thinktankSK

@thinktanksk.bsky.social

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