Quinte West council heard a highly unusual request from a city homeowner Wednesday.
Joel Fox asked council to increase his property tax by at least 6% next year.
Why?
After researching tax rates, Fox learned that renters in multi-residential buildings were paying twice the tax rate for their units than the owners of single family homes.
Fox said that simply wasn’t fair and taxes should be cut for renters given they used up less space than people in houses.
Fox said rules were in place to ensure tenants received the benefits of a property tax decrease.
“There’s actually a federal law that requires any tax reduction over 2.5% to be directly passed on to the tenants
so the city would be required to send a letter to tenants saying that the taxes on the property will be going down by this much.”
Council thought the idea was interesting but suggested the province update its property assessments so municipalities could consider major changes to tax rates.
