The Town of The Blue Mountains has approved its tax rates for 2024.
At its committee of the whole meeting on June 10, council unanimously voted in favour of a staff report to officially set the tax rates for 2024. The rates will come to council’s next meeting on June 24 for final approval.
The formal setting of the tax rates is a routine piece of business for local municipalities, which allows them to set the final tax bills for the year.
The final two tax installments for ratepayers in The Blue Mountains will be due on August 22 and October 22. The Blue Mountains is collecting a total tax levy of $20,894,000 in 2024.
Amy Moore, manager of revenue, said the only change in the town’s tax policy this year is the next step in a multi-year plan to equalize multi-residential property tax ratios with those of residential properties.
The multi-residential tax ratio for 2024 will be 1.220600 down from 1.330900 in 2024. Tax ratios are set by Grey County for each class of property in the property tax system.
Each property class in Grey County (residential, farm, managed forest, new multi-residential, multi-residential, commercial, resort condominium, industrial, landfill and pipeline) has its own tax ratio that determines the amount of property tax they pay. The starting ratio is 1.00, which is charged to all residential properties in the county. Some property classes are seen as revenue-generating (industrial and commercial) and have a higher ratios. Others such as farm and managed forest have lower ratios.
In 2023, Grey County implemented a new policy to phase-in reductions to the multi-residential tax ratio to bring it to the same ratio as residential properties. The provincial government has encouraged this change in an effort to lower property taxes on multi-residential properties to spur the construction of more purpose-built rental homes in Ontario.
The ratio reduction applies to only existing multi-residential properties, as the province has already mandated that newly constructed multi-residential buildings be taxed at the residential ratio.
