City Council has approved its 2023 Tax Policy, setting tax ratios for the year for each property class. Council accepted recommendations by City Administration and has implemented the following:
- reduced the commercial ratio from 2.007675 to the provincial threshold of 1.98,
- reduced the large industrial ratio from 2.85 to 2.73,
- reduced the multi-residential ratio from 2.0 to 1.99 and,
- adopted starting ratios for all other classes.
As noted in the long term tax strategy that was adopted by City Council in April, “The municipal tax ratio is the degree of which a property class is taxed relative to the residential class and the residential ratio is always 1. Properties in different classes are taxed at different tax rates via the setting of tax ratios because of historical differences in tax burdens that were present prior to the 1998 provincial reform of the property tax system. Typically, commercial, industrial, and multi-residential properties pay higher taxes than residential properties.
An analysis of the assessment values and tax ratio calculations shows that business property classes (multi-residential, commercial, industrial) comprise less than 7% of the properties in the city with assessed values of less than 21% of total property values and will pay over 36% of the total taxes collected in 2023.
“The Chamber acknowledges the progress that has been made over the past 5 years to reduce the tax burden on our business property classes and welcomes the further reduction of 2023 tax ratios for the Commercial and Large Industrial property classes,” says Charla Robinson, President. ” Thunder Bay’s business property taxes continue to be higher than the Provincial average (as shown in the 2022 BMA Report) and the Chamber will continue our advocacy towards more efficient city operations that will benefit everyone through reduced taxes for our community.”
