The deadline to pay property tax bills is looming over New Brunswickers, causing anxiety for homeowners who are facing inflated assessments and whose appeals have not been resolved — yet still have to pay up.
One of those is local realtor Judy Mitchell, who owns a home in the South Bay area of Saint John and whose tax bill shot up over $1800 this year. She tells us she made no renovations last year besides some light landscaping. She’s filed an appeal and has yet to hear anything.
“It’s got my stomach a little turned,” says Mitchell. “We have to make the entire payment at once. It’s a lot of money to come up with at one time and certainly not when you’re budgeting on $4000 and you’ve got to come up with closer to 6.”
She thinks the deadline should be pushed forward for anyone who had an assessment increase of more than 10-percent, until they know with complete certainty what their bill actually is.
“You don’t go into a restaurant and just give them a blank cheque and order your meal,” says Mitchell.
According to Service New Brunswick, those tax bills that have been revised are mailed throughout the year and payment is due 90 days from the mailing date. The due date is indicated on the tax bill.
Judy Mitchell
Christene Sooley of Nauwigewauk, whose story we shared a few months back, is also feeling the pressure.
She filed an appeal on March 6 after her assessment shot up a staggering 78-percent — a more than $1000 increase in her tax bill.
Sooley lives with cerebral palsy and is on disability.
“Our income has been cut drastically because of that and we just cannot afford this drastic increase all at once,” Sooley says.
Christene Sooley
She was told by Service New Brunswick that the reason for the increase in her assessment was that there was no record of a granny suite being added to the two-bedroom bungalow she owns, which we’re told was there when she bought it nearly nine years ago.
The granny suite
Sooley feels she is being penalized because the previous owner and the assessors didn’t do their due diligence.
“It’s not my fault that they are not out doing their job,” says Sooley. “They should have somebody coming around every so many years just to check and make sure that things are as they have on their file, so that the taxes can be done properly.”
Premier Brian Gallant was in Saint John this week for an announcement and we pressed him on whether the May 31 deadline to pay would be pushed forward, as the deadline for requests for reviews had been. He did not answer that question, but instead reiterated details SNB posted on the government website in late April.
“It’s unacceptable, every single error can have an impact on a family. It can cause confusion, inconvenience and in some cases financial hardship,” Gallant says. “That’s why we’ve extended the request for review deadline and that’s why we’ve made it very clear that if there’s an error people can flag it at any moment.”
The deadline to request a review has been moved to August 1 and property tax bills are due on May 31.
If, after a revision the assessment goes down, the homeowner will receive a credit, but that could be a long time as it’s expected all of the reviews could take up to early 2018 to complete. Over 15,000 appeals have been filed so far, compared to a total of 7100 last year.
Nearly 1300 revisions had been made by SNB as of May 6, according to data from Shawn Peterson of the property assessment website propertize.ca
