District of Squamish council has approved a property tax increase of 4.2% this year. In a statement, District said the 2023 property tax revenue requirement of 37.2M is 8.9% higher than 2022, with just over half of it offset by community growth, that is additional taxpayers.
Council adopted the municipal property tax rates at the Special Business Meeting on Tuesday, May 9. With a property tax revenue requirement of $37.2 million, rates were across various tax classes. As much as 84% of taxes comes from residential taxpayers and 14% from business taxpayers.
“We are acutely aware that our business tax rates must remain competitive with other BC communities to attract investment here, and ensure that local businesses are sustainable,” said Mayor Armand Hurford. “At the same time, residential taxpayers cannot shoulder all the burden, and so the rates aim to meet the requirements of the 2023 budget, remain below BC averages, and make attempts to soften the impacts of increasing property assessments over time.”
Hurford said the budget aims to balance pressures Squamish faces with the pressing needs of the community, including infrastructure maintenance and upgrades and inflation and ongoing supply chain disruptions.
“The overall growth and rapid rise in assessments have meant that all Squamish property owners have been disproportionately impacted at some point, and this year it is our business class that is seeing the bigger impact. The District is catching up after decades where taxes remained artificially low, and now much infrastructure and facility upgrade work is required to sustain the community, which comes with very real financial impacts.”
District said that while single family taxpayers have seen larger increases in prior years as their properties saw big jumps in assessment, this year’s increase is lower due to a lower property assessment increase.
Property assessments are undertaken by BC Assessment and are calculated as of July 1 each year. However, an increase in property value doesn’t automatically equate to an increase in property taxes. This depends on how a property’s assessment changes in relation to the average change of the property class.
The deadline to pay 2023 Property Taxes and Utilities without penalty is Tuesday, July 4, 2023.
