Property Tax

Tax Appeals

Basis For Your Assessment

Your realty assessment is based on the market value of your property as at the following base dates:

Appeal Period

The Appeal Periods start when the assessment notices are published and vary by province:

(1) Newfoundland and Labrador march to a different drummer. The City of St. John's compiles its own assessments and usually issues the Assessment Notices on 1st September. Assessments in the remainder of the province are compiled by the Municipal Assessment Agency Inc. and are usually issued in October.

Appeal Process

We have appealed properties with assessments ranging between $100,000 and $130 million. Because of our excellent track record in court, over 90% of our appeals are now settled by negotiation with the various Assessment Departments. Nevertheless it is sometimes still necessary to proceed to court where points of principle are involved or the Assessor is obdurate. Potentially therefore we employ the following three stage process:

Stage 1 (Assessment Audit) - We review the assessment and compare it with other assessments and the costing manuals employed by the Assessor. We report back to our client by letter with a thorough analysis of the assessment calculations, detailing our estimate of the correct assessment, the potential tax savings, our recommended course of action, the probability of success and the associated cost.

Our recommended course of action will usually be, (1) negotiation with the Assessor, or (2) abandonment of the appeal. We will not undertake frivolous appeals. We achieve tax savings with virtually every appeal we undertake because Assessors recognise that we do not get involved unless there are genuine grounds for questioning the assessment.

Stage 2 (Negotiation) - If the client wishes us to conduct the negotiations we prepare a position paper and open negotiations with the Assessor. We are able to conclude over 90% of all appeals by negotiation. However if we are unable to reach a satisfactory settlement we report back to our client by letter detailing our recommended course of action, the probability of its success and the associated cost.

Our recommended course of action will usually be, (1) proceed to the Appeal Board, or (2) abandonment of the appeal.

Stage 3 (Appeal Board) - We appear on the client's behalf to present the case before the Appeal Board. In most cases legal counsel are not required.

The decision whether to proceed to each stage rests entirely with our client: the potential tax savings and the probability of achieving them have to be weighed against the cost involved.

How Successful Are We?

Since January 1st 1990 we have quietly and cost effectively saved thousands of property owners and occupiers, an aggregate annual amount in the millions of dollars. Since we only entered the Ontario market in late 1998, most of these tax savings have been in the four Atlantic Provinces. However we have been successful with most types of property as the following table demonstrates:

Case Law

Click here for relevant property tax case law.