Land tax adjustment???

[furrowtickler]

With the value of land almost trippling overnight, when is there going to be a land tax revision to relect all this glorious new found wealth.... me thinks sooner than later our land tax's will double as well. Good times

[fjlip]

But reduce mill rate if RM costs are not increasing.

[oneoff]

In Sask it is every 4 years.

You're in luck because next year is the year. The figures have been out for months. And if you'd attend council meetings ( and unfortunately that applies to just about every reader on this forum as well as the rest of the province); you would have known that the increase in assesment is very significant.

But when you begin to understand that other classes of assessment (eg. residential, commercial and industrial) went up or down even more significantly then it gets even more interesting. One repercussion is that your mansion might have an assessment greater than your agricultural land assessment; thus triggering an actual tax bill on your principal residence that didn't occur before.

For the many that don't understand "tax tools" then there are things that our "leadership" can do. But that surely makes a mockery of assesment values and thus we end up with an uncoordinated hodge poge of varying tax notices for similar properties; amongst way too many RM's.

And don't forget that four years from now; the then latest assessment will be for today's 2012 land values.

Thats going to be a real shocker; and any RM with resource or oilfield asseessment not using "tax tools"; there will be one hell of a shift back onto the backs of farmland owners.
And if this comes as a suprise to anyone; then just chock it up to lack of accountability; and but another bit of your business that it was decided you would have no interest in hearing.

[oneoff]

Flip... It's misleading to imply that if an RM budget remains relatively static; then mill rates could be reduced; ergo tax bills remain the same.

Only if budgeted amounts stays similar and relative tax income from each class remained static would this be true.

But "tax tools" are commonly used somewhat (if not to excess); commercial and industrial assessment can be 88% of an RM's current revenue; and agricultural land and residential assessment have literally sky rocketed (check out next years assessment notice); with much bigger explosions due in only four more years.

Welcome to the new world of growth and expansion.