Property Assessments
BC Assessment develops and maintains real property assessments throughout British Columbia in addition to providing real property information in compliance with the Assessment Act. To do this, they produce assessment information annually to provide tax authorities, including the CRD, with a tax base and other information collected about property.
Assessment notices for each parcel of land are issued annually around January 1. Your assessment notice will describe the value of your property for the purpose of taxation across nine different property classes. Your assessed value may not necessarily reflect the market value of your property. You can find more information about how to understand your assessment and the assessment process on BC Assessment's website.
The Cariboo Regional District does not determine your assessed value, and your assessed value does not necessarily result in changes to your level of taxation. While an above average increase in assessed value generally results in a higher amount of taxes being paid, the actual amount of property taxes payable will depend on the services your property is enrolled in and the rates payable for those services.
Property Value Taxes
Several taxing authorities will determine taxation that will be reflected on your tax notice, including the provincial government (school and police), BC Assessment, Municipal Finance Authority, and your local municipality (if applicable).
The CRD Board sets property tax rates for properties within the regional district based on the services your property receives. You pay property taxes for each service your property is subscribed to along with solid waste management, regional hospital district financing, and regional government services (governance, administration, and finance). Under provincial regulations, tax rates are set only for residential properties (BC Assessment Class 1) and, using regulatory multipliers, calculated for all other property tax classes.
Property tax rates are set as a dollar-value per-thousand dollars of assessed value. For example, a property tax rate of $5 per $1,000 assessed value on a $100,000 home would pay $500 in property taxes to the CRD.
Parcel Taxes
Another method of taxation is a per-parcel or frontage tax rate for specific local services (ex. water or sewer services) levied on the unit, frontage or area of a property. Parcel taxes are distinct and separate from the property value taxes, which are levied on the assessed value of a property. The CRD cannot use parcel taxes to recover costs for general administration.
A parcel is a designated area of land (i.e. a lot registered with the Land Title Survey Authority, or a folio from the property assessment roll) that does not include a highway. For example, a residential land lot and the home on that lot may represent one parcel.
A parcel tax may be imposed on the basis of a single amount for each parcel (unit), the taxable area of a parcel, or the taxable linear frontage of the parcel.
Revenue Approaches
The Cariboo Regional District reviews its approach to taxation regularly, to ensure that property owners are treated equitably and our services are appropriately funded. Two important fairness issues are considered when we are making this choice:
- Should a service be user-pay? User-pay systems work great for things such as user fees, licenses, and fees, and goods and services, but it is not an effective method when the benefits are hard to measure or extend to a majority of the population.
- Should we use the tax system to redistribute wealth by taxing affluent residents more than others? An example of this concept would be a progressive income tax scheme, where the more income you earn, the more tax you pay.
We work within legislation enacted by senior levels of government (provincial and federal). The Cariboo Regional District's taxation is based on collecting tax dollars for a specific purpose, with no general revenue fund to redistribute wealth across services. To that end, we are authorized to use the following four taxation regimes:
- User fees for goods or services
- Parcel taxes
- Taxes based on the assessed value of land and improvements
- A combination of the above revenue sources
To determine which method of taxation the CRD should use for a particular service, the Board takes into consideration whether direct methods, wealth redistribution methods, or a combination of these tax methods will be the most equitable way to collect the required funding.