Making budgeting for property taxes easier
Are you looking for ways to make our budgeting easier? The Municipality of the District of Lunenburg has a flexible plan to help make managing your property taxes easy. Our Tax Instalment Payment Plan (TIPP) is a monthly tax instalment payment plan allowing you to prepay your estimated property tax billing for the upcoming year.
The municipality administers the plan, and the tax billing includes all applicable area rates, including fire, sewer, hydrant charges, road maintenance, streetlights, etc.
There are three prepayment options for those who want to use TIPP:
1. The first option lets you pay with 12 equal monthly payments. Your monthly payment amount is set based on the prior year's tax billing and is due on the last working day of each month.
2. The second option is a predefined amount, in which you determine a monthly payment amount they would like to pay toward their account due on the last working day of each month.
3. Finally, there is the option of prepaying the entire amount. With this option, you'll automatically pay the full amount of taxes owing based on the due dates of the interim and final tax billings. You'll need to set up automatic withdrawals from your bank account to make your payments.
Participating in TIPP makes it easy for you to budget. There are no administration fees (although money in your prepayment account doesn't earn interest). You won't owe any penalties when you've made all your payments based on the option you chose and there is a sufficient balance to cover what you owe.
A TIPP must be set up for each property tax account individually, and then we'll credit your property tax account with the payments withdrawn from your bank account. Your property tax billing will show all funds previously withdrawn from your bank account on the May interim tax bill and each year's October final tax bill.
If your prepayments are more than your tax owing, your notice will show a credit balance. (Remember, a credit balance shows up on your tax notice as a negative amount.) If your prepayments are less than taxes owing, your tax notice will show a balance due, which will be subject to interest if not paid by the due date.
Why is now a good time to get your property taxes organized? The ideal time to start TIPP is in November, once you've paid all your current year property taxes up to date. However, we'll need to receive your application by the 16th of any given month to start withdrawals at the end of that month.
If you wish to arrange monthly deductions for past due amounts, interest will apply to all overdue amounts and a credit will not begin to build in your account until you are entirely up to date on your taxes. If you sell your home, credits on your property tax account can remain in the account, or you can send in a written request for us to refund them to you.
To register for TIPP, complete the prepayment application form available at the municipal services building) online at www.modl.ca/tipp or by calling 902-541-1338.
Carolyn Bolivar-getson is the mayor of the Municipality of the District of Lunenburg.