St. John’s aims to be more transparent with tax accounts in arrears

On the heels of a CBC story looking into City of St. John’s residential and commercial tax accounts in arrears, the municipality has decided to go public with a summary of taxes owing.

The numbers show that although 97.5 per cent of taxes were collected in 2016, the city is owed close to $14 million from nearly 3,600 accounts.

As of the end of January, 226 accounts were in arrears over $10,000, while another 18 accounts owed more than $100,000.

City taxes totalling more than $200 million represent 75 per cent of the city’s annual revenue and are used to fund services such as garbage collection and snowclearing, as well as city programming and events. The city says it can employ a number of avenues to settle accounts:

• Developing payment plans with individuals and businesses.

• Correspondence in the form of demand letters, water cut-off notices and legal action (water cut-off is based on individual circumstances of each account and does not occur in the winter months).

• Referral to the Payment Review Board for accounts in delinquency due to financial hardship.

• A tax sale of a property only occurs as a last resort and is limited to non-owner occupied property. The last tax sale was held in 2015, but the city is already committed to one in 2017.

In an effort to make more information available and reduce the number of Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act

requests, the city will also post all final reports from ATIPPA requests on the city’s website, starting this spring.