Higgs out to overhaul New Brunswick’s property tax system
Facing an outcry over high property taxes, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs says provincial assessment services need an overhaul, and is musing that it could be farmed out to a private company or a new, standalone Crown corporation.
Speaking to reporters March 21 at the legislature, the Progressive Conservative premier said property tax assessments had long plagued New Brunswick governments, both Liberal and Tory.
This year, close to 10,000 property owners have launched appeals of their assessments, the highest number since a 2017 property tax scandal when Service New Brunswick pushed through batches of higher assessments without doing proper evaluations.
“Here we have a case where assessments are up because the population’s up and the demand’s up, so the market has improved,” Higgs said. “People aren’t really questioning the value of their homes. They’re questioning the taxes that are related to that value.”
This year, the provincial government added an information sheet to property tax bills encouraging homeowners to contact their municipal government if they are unhappy with their tax rate.
The province comes up with the property assessments and collects the taxes, but then transfers the taxes on people’s principal home to municipalities. It only collects a portion of property taxes for its own coffers from apartments, cottages, secondary homes and commercial properties.
Nine out of every 10 property owners saw their property assessments go up this year.
At the high end, four out of 10 properties saw greater than a 10 per cent increase in their assessed values. Even with the province’s spike protection mechanism, many bills will go up 10 per cent, or hundreds of dollars.
Higgs said there was a good reason the province included the information sheet.
“The general public felt it was our bill because it has the Government of New Brunswick’s name on it. We do the assessments, that’s fair. But we don’t set the tax rate.”
Nonetheless, he expressed sympathy for municipalities struggling to make ends meet following local government reforms that his government imposed last year.
“I know the municipalities have increased costs, the same as we do. Our costs of operating government have gone up dramatically. So, I know they’re faced with the same thing. But let’s all look at where the opportunity can and cannot be and find out other sources of revenue.”