Comment 112134

By CharlesBall (registered) | Posted June 09, 2015 at 15:42:09

Lots of strange things can happen because of tax rates.

The mill rate for vacant commercial land used for parking is 3.6455570 % (as opposed to residential which is about 1.387)

You can own a residential property worth $170,000.00 and be taxed about 2300 per year. If you decide you need the property for parking, you can tear it down but it will be reassessed as a commercial parking lot and, low and behold, it will be re-assessed at $170,000.00 per year actually increasing the taxes to just under 6000 per year. A boon for the City. If you tear it down and leave it vacant, it's value will decrease to about $60,000.00 and taxes will drop to $832.00. If a dilapidated building is bought for speculation, the speculator would rather pay the lowest tax. You lose the building and you gain some weeds.

People are ingenious about working around rules. My advice is to be very careful about how the rules are changed.

(BTW Keep in mind that Municipalities are in competition with each other. Hamilton's residential mill rate is very high (I think only Windsor's is higher) Mississauga is .886, Toronto is .705, Oakville is .84, Halton/Burlington is .757.)

No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? George Orwell

Permalink | Context

Events Calendar

There are no upcoming events right now.
Why not post one?

Recent Articles

Article Archives

Blog Archives

Site Tools

Feeds