The city has outlined plans for increasing taxes but some homeowners who pay using the instalment program are confused because they have already received notices before the final numbers are approved.
The Tax Instalment Payment Plan or TIPP allows homeowners to pay property taxes on a monthly basis instead of in one lump sum.
About 150,000 property owners received a notice that shows marked increases in their monthly payment and some contacted CTV wondering how they can be told their bill is going up when city council hasn't formally approved the 4.5 percent tax increase.
Our Consumer Specialist Lea Williams-Doherty took a look and says it is the result of a complicated billing system and says this also involves a 2014 tax rebate which kept the payments low.
In 2013, the city collected more money than it required to pay the province in education taxes so it gave back $52M to homeowners as a credit on their 2014 tax bills.
Lea says that wasn't made clear in the tax notice.
Greg Krulka uses the program and in May, the city sent him his annual property tax bill.
He was surprised when he got a notice telling him his payments will go up by 7.5 percent on January 1st 2015.
“I didn't understand what was going on, why they submitted it to us before the actual budget was done,” said Krulka.
“Their tax rate hasn't gone up, the impacts for January first, their payments, would be removal of that rebate,” said Allen Gee, City of Calgary Tax Department. “The rate itself has not changed.”
Lea says homeowners not on the TIPP program are unaffected by this because their 2014 tax bill contained the entire rebate and it was simply subtracted from what they owed when they wrote the 2014 cheque.
For more information on the TIPP program, click HERE.
(With files from Lea Williams-Doherty)
