Every three years, with the spring comes the deadline for contesting the latest municipal assessment of properties located in one of the municipalities having filed a new triennial evaluation roll. This new roll may have a significant impact on property owners, but on lessees as well.
If you are the owner of a property and believe that its municipal assessment is inappropriate, you may consider initiating administrative review of the assessment proceedings which consists in various steps:
- Filing an application for administrative review of the assessment roll – by April 30, 2017.
- Receiving the response of the municipal assessor – by August 30, 2017 (unless an extension is granted).
- If the municipal assessor makes a proposal which is acceptable to the property owner, an agreement must be entered into regarding a reimbursement within 30 days after the date on which the assessor's response was sent.
- If the assessor's proposal is rejected by the property owner, the latter must file a contestation with the Administrative Tribunal of Québec within 60 days after the date on which the assessor's response was sent.
Your application for review must be prepared using the prescribed form, on which you must set out the grounds raised for questioning the assessment. You must carefully include on the form all of the grounds on which you will be relying, as you will not be able to raise any additional ones if you go on to the contestation stage. If you neglect to file your application for review in due time, you will have to bear the consequences of the municipal assessment for 2017 until 2020!
If you are a lessee, you also have the right to contest the municipal assessment of the property you occupy. In this regard you should refer to the clause in your lease regarding the sharing of property taxes, which may represent a significant portion of your occupancy cost. Be sure to obtain your property tax account before the deadline for contesting the assessment of the property where you have leased premises (April 30, 2017) in order to determine whether you may need to take steps to have the assessment of the entire property contested or the portion you occupy thereof.
Below for your information is a non-exhaustive list of the municipalities having a new evaluation roll this year.
| Principal
municipalities having a triennial roll beginning in
2017 (Non-exhaustive list) |
|
| Baie d'Urfé Beaconsfield Beloeil Beauharnois Boisbriand Bromont Chambly Côte-Saint-Luc Dollard-des-Ormeaux Dorval Hampstead Joliette Kirkland La Malbaie La Prairie La Pocatière Lebel-sur-Quevillon Les Îles de la Madeleine Lévis Matane Matapédia Mirabel Montréal Montréal-Est |
Montréal-Ouest Mont-Royal Mont Saint-Hilaire Mont-Tremblant Notre-Dame-des-Prairies Oka Pointe-Claire Richelieu Rimouski Rivière-du-Loup Roberval Saint-Adolphe d'Howard Sainte-Catherine Saint-Charles-Borromée Saint-Constant Saint-Donat Saint-Jérôme Sainte-Thérèse Salaberry-de-Valleyfield Sorel-Tracy Sutton Terrebonne Westmount |
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
