Renters, homeowners, and businesses located in Burlington pay property taxes.
If you rent your landlord pays property taxes by giving part of your rent to the
city.
The city and Mayor Meed Ward insist on using the term impact and talking
about other taxes that are on our tax bills. Whenever you see information about
tax increases, you’ll also see the wording like this:
“The City of Burlington collects taxes for the City, Halton Region, and
the Halton District School Boards. As shown in the chart attached, for each
residential dollar collected, 50.5 per cent stays in the City, 32.8 per cent
goes to Halton Region and 16.7 per cent goes to the Halton district school
boards.”
We get one difficult-to-read bill, from the city, for taxes. This bill
includes taxes for the city, Halton Police, Halton Region, and the Halton
district school boards. By combining taxes from different levels of government we get to pay one bill four times a year instead of
four bills four times a year. More importantly, there is only one bureaucracy
associated with mailing out the bills and collecting taxes instead of four
bureaucracies. A more environmentally friendly approach would be an
option to email our tax bills but that’s a separate issue.
The fact that the city collects the taxes for four different organizations
does not mean the city can pretend its tax increases are lower than they actually
are. Sadly, that is what happens. Every time you see the mayor use the word “impact” double it to
quickly approximate the actual increase.
To check this with your tax bills, follow the steps here:
How to calculate the real percentage increase from your tax bills 2022 to 2023.
Use the highlighted amount to do the calculations; this is the amount that goes into the city’s bank account. Only use your “Final Tax Bill” from each year.
This is a real 2022 amount to the City of Burlington – final bill: $1,862.18
This is a real 2023 amount to the City of Burlington – final bill: $2,152.56 same house and no change in assessment.
Difference 2,152.56 – 1,862.18 = 290.38
As a percentage a 290.38 increase on 1,862.18 works out to 15.59%
The Burlington increase has nothing to do with the police, the region or education. Burlington increased the property tax revenue it collected from existing home owners (urban) by 15.59% in 2023. New homes and condos, that started paying taxes in 2023, contributed additional dollars to the tax revenue being collected and spent.
Do you remember any discussion on a 15.59% increase during the budget discussions in late 2022? Like most of us you may have beleived the city’s propaganda that the increase was going to be 7.08%.
You can repeat these steps using your final 2023 and 2024 tax bills. The increase for 2024 was 10.21%.
Do you remember any discussion on a 10.21% increase during the budget discussions in late 2023? Like most of us you may have beleived the city’s propaganda that the increase was going to be 4.99%.
If you work out the increase from 2022 to 2024 you’ll see that this council, since being elected in 2022, has raised taxes by 27.4%.
All the mayor talked about for the 2023 budget was a 4.99% impact. It sure looks like impact and increase are very different things.
Burlington is asking for public input on the proposed 2025 budget increase of 8.9%
This statement is from the getinvolved survey.
“As we plan this year’s budget, we’re facing inflation, much like our residents and local businesses. Our 2025 forecast predicts a total tax increase of 5.5%, with 1% for Halton Region services, 4.5% for Burlington services, and no change for education. The city’s tax increase is expected to slow down in the coming years as we reach a more sustainable financial position.”
The city is using this statement to pretend an 8.9%, Burlington-only, property tax increase is somehow 4.5%. When you put half the bill up by 8.9%, half of our tax bill goes to Burlington, the impact of this on the total bill is the 4.5% the city wants us to think is their increase. The Halton increase will be in the 3% range but Halton is only 1/3 of our tax bill so using the same convoluted logic the city is saying that is a 1% increase.
Sadly, the city continues to use Burlington Speak (BS for short) when communicating with us.
Please sign this petition to let the city know what you think of their tax increases.
