City of Calgary Tax Assessments

[Surferguy]

Your new Tax Assessments can be found here:

http://dmzwww2.gov.calgary.ab.ca/fai...rchOptions.asp

Apparently "If your your assessment shows a greater than 43% increase from last year, your taxes will increase. If less that 43% your taxes will stay the same."

I strongly encourage a verification of this above statement as I am not sure if this is true (third party info).

[CanadianTurbo]

My assessment went up about 44% and the taxes went up ever so slightly, but I only had a half year last year but I doubled all the numbers for comparison sake.

[yeeg]

taxes did not increase much for me...17% maybe? Assessment went up over 50% though

[Boris2k7]

Our assessment is up over 60%... :\

[newflyer]

Originally Posted by yeeg

taxes did not increase much for me...17% maybe? Assessment went up over 50% though

17% increse in taxes isn't much??

.... Would you have the same opinion if you income tax rose 17% ?

The government loves people like you.. raise taxes 17% at a time and nothing to worry about.

[polishavenger]

I think we need a new formula for taxation. I suggest the following

1) Just like with market assessment, forecast the cities funding requirments
2) Calculate the cities entire surface area
3) Divide the required funding by surface area to get the funds required on a per square kilometer basis
4) Multiply the density of the lot by the required funds per square kilometer, and there you have your property tax.

Hypothetical situation

- City needs 1,000,000,000 in operating capital
- The city is 1000 square kilometers therefore each square kilometer needs to raise 1,000,000 dollars.
- 1000 homes at the same density in 1 square kilometers, therefore each home needs to raise 1000 bucks in property taxes.

Granted this formula needs much tweaking to take into account business, industrial, residential, and many other factors, but at least its a start in taxing people for the amount of space they take up, therefore how costly it is to service them.

Thoughts?

[Claeren]

^Great!!

I once suggested something very similiar but i had figured it out having ~50% calculated by the current property value system and then the other ~50% calculated by the density.

The other option to include, or an option to bonus/penalize, was to further adjust property taxes by the distance the home is from the center of the city.

So a similiar density abode of equal value close to the core would pay less tax (10%?) than a comparable abode in the far suburbs.


Furthermore, any group of home owners (like a condo tower) that pays for its own trash removal gets a further reduction (5%? More?).



Claeren.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by newflyer

17% increse in taxes isn't much??

.... Would you have the same opinion if you income tax rose 17% ?

The government loves people like you.. raise taxes 17% at a time and nothing to worry about.

Devil's advocate, but tax increases like that are far easier to swallow here because they're so damn low to begin with. A 17% increase in my property tax is a couple hundred bucks. A 17% income tax increase is (potentially, anyway) thousands.

Mostly though, it's remembering the $4000+ property tax bills in Winnipeg. Our bill here is half that on twice the house.

Not that any tax increase is ever a good thing, but if they're gonna go up, at least increase the ones that don't seem ridiculously high. This city seems to be a lot better at how it spends its money than some. I'm sure everyone will disagree with that though, because <<pet project>> isn't well funded.

[psych1]

Originally Posted by newflyer

17% increse in taxes isn't much??

.... Would you have the same opinion if you income tax rose 17% ?

The government loves people like you.. raise taxes 17% at a time and nothing to worry about.

Taxes bad...government bad...money good. We know already

[CCF]

Originally Posted by freeweed

Devil's advocate, but tax increases like that are far easier to swallow here because they're so damn low to begin with. A 17% increase in my property tax is a couple hundred bucks. A 17% income tax increase is (potentially, anyway) thousands.

Mostly though, it's remembering the $4000+ property tax bills in Winnipeg. Our bill here is half that on twice the house.

Not that any tax increase is ever a good thing, but if they're gonna go up, at least increase the ones that don't seem ridiculously high. This city seems to be a lot better at how it spends its money than some. I'm sure everyone will disagree with that though, because <<pet project>> isn't well funded.

Now one just has to solve the "how do I get the house" problem, and you're set!

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by CCF

Now one just has to solve the "how do I get the house" problem, and you're set!

Houses are easy to get here.

A salary large enough to qualify for the mortgage, on the other hand...

[IntotheWest]

Originally Posted by Claeren

^Great!!

The other option to include, or an option to bonus/penalize, was to further adjust property taxes by the distance the home is from the center of the city.

So a similiar density abode of equal value close to the core would pay less tax (10%?) than a comparable abode in the far suburbs.

Claeren.

That seems like a decent idea, but there are still a lot of Calgarians that don't have a real use for downtown on a daily basis - such as myself...why penalize because we don't live there?

I'd agree with the density, but, I think the city needs to simply design our neighbourhoods more efficiently - this isn't something you need to penalize the taxpayer for.

Anyway, our house went up some 40%, but our taxes went DOWN this year...we were surprised.

[yeeg]

Originally Posted by newflyer

17% increse in taxes isn't much??

.... Would you have the same opinion if you income tax rose 17% ?

The government loves people like you.. raise taxes 17% at a time and nothing to worry about.

17% relative to 50% is nothing...if your house went up 10% in value but they charged you 15% more in taxes, then I would have a problem...

[polishavenger]

Originally Posted by IntotheWest

That seems like a decent idea, but there are still a lot of Calgarians that don't have a real use for downtown on a daily basis - such as myself...why penalize because we don't live there?

I'd agree with the density, but, I think the city needs to simply design our neighbourhoods more efficiently - this isn't something you need to penalize the taxpayer for.

Anyway, our house went up some 40%, but our taxes went DOWN this year...we were surprised.

At the moment the city is penalizing those who have chosen to live in the most sustainable and ecologically efficient neighbourhoods, which just so happen to be the fastest appreciating areas of town. The tax system shouldnt punish anyone, it should simply make people pay for the burden they put on the system. Density translates well into that. The less dense an area, the more per capita the city has to spend on roads, pipes, parks, transit etc to service the area.