Ontario property assessments will officially remain frozen on 2016 values for the 2024 taxation year, and the Divisional Court will hear an appeal regarding taxpayers' rights to annually challenge their property assessments.
The Ontario property assessment system ordinarily operates on a four-year cycle. The Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) conducts a general reassessment of all properties in the province as of a legislated valuation date, and that new assessed value is phased in from the previous valuation date over the course of four years. The most recent valuation date was January 1, 2016, which was intended to apply to assessments for the 2017-2020 taxation years.
Ontario was scheduled for a new valuation date of January 1, 2020, to apply to the 2021-2024 taxation years, but the provincial government postponed the reassessment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The reassessment was initially delayed by one year, but the government has passed a new regulation each year since, further delaying the general reassessment.1 On August 16, 2023, the provincial government filed Ontario Regulation 261/23 under the Assessment Act to officially extend the current assessment cycle to the 2024 taxation year, which means that next year the four-year assessment cycle will enter its eighth year.
The further freeze allows MPAC to simply skip one cycle and theoretically resume assessments as usual for the 2025-2028 assessment cycle. Unless the government makes further regulations, those assessments would be based on a January 1, 2023 valuation date. The Ministry of Finance has indicated that the government is undertaking a review of the province's property assessment and taxation system, so more changes can be expected.
The Ontario government was recently urged by a coalition of municipal, business and real estate industry representatives to commit to a date for a new reassessment. Updated and accurate assessments stabilize and make taxes more predictable, and would increase the economic competiveness of Ontario real estate. This would also ensure an equitable distribution of the tax burden.
A common misconception is that reassessments increase property taxes. Municipalities collect property taxes to fund municipal services, with the amount levied being based on the cost of funding those services. A reassessment does not increase that cost. Instead, frequent reassessments redistribute the portion that taxpayers are responsible for paying, based on the comparative changes in property values. The effect of a frozen assessment cycle is that taxpayers continue to pay based on outdated values. Properties that have disproportionately increased in value since 2016 are now paying disproportionately low taxes for their properties, which necessarily means that other taxpayers are shouldering more than their fair share of the tax burden.
An additional consequence of the now eight-year assessment cycle is the impact on taxpayers' annual rights to appeal their property assessments. In some instances, MPAC or municipalities have argued that where taxpayers resolved their assessment appeals earlier in the cycle, they are barred from appealing their assessments for later years in the same cycle, even where those taxation years were only recently added to the cycle.
For example, in Manulife Ontario Property Portfolio Inc. v MPAC, 2023 CanLII 13877, the taxpayer had resolved its assessment appeals for the 2017-2020 taxation years through minutes of settlement. In 2021, MPAC applied an equitable reduction to the assessments of other office towers in downtown Ottawa near Manulife's office tower, but did not apply that equitable reduction to Manulife's property. Manulife appealed its property assessment for the 2021 and 2022 taxation years – which have now been added to the same assessment cycle as the 2017-2020 taxation years – on the basis that the property was assessed inequitably high compared to similar properties in its vicinity.
On a motion brought by MPAC, the Assessment Review Board dismissed the taxpayer's appeals for the new taxation years, on the basis of issue estoppel. Manulife sought leave to appeal the Assessment Review Board's decision to the Divisional Court, and was granted leave on August 16, 2023. The outcome of this appeal may clarify an important question regarding taxpayers' rights to annually challenge their property assessments and to ensure the equitable distribution of the property tax burden. That question is all the more important while the next general reassessment continues to be further delayed.
Footnote
1. Ontario Regulation 186/20, extending cycle to 2021; Ontario Regulation 320/21, extending cycle to 2022; and Ontario Regulation 13/22, extending cycle to 2023.
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