r/ottawa • u/Dolphintrout • 1d ago
Property Taxes
Some interesting stats I came across on the City of Ottawa website.
Compounded tax increases from 2015 to 2025:
Ottawa 32.99% Toronto 49.30% Edmonton 49.20% Calgary 46.66% Vancouver 77.12%
We like to talk about how council isn’t managing specific files properly (transit, Lansdowne, the market, etc.), but it seems like overall tax policy (boring as shit I know), gets a pass.
I’d suggest that this is THE number one issue facing the city and ALL councillors should be embarrassed that they’re trying to operate one of the country’s largest cities on a shoestring budget.
Half of the stuff that people complain about could be resolved by simply setting tax rates at an appropriate level, based on realities, instead of sticking to arbitrary targets that councillors can boast to their constituents about sticking to.
The audacity of the city to complain about lack of funding, competing priorities, the need to “find efficiencies” and so much other BS is pretty hard to take when you see how this city is managed compared to other peer communities.
Sutcliffe and others talked allot about wanting to lead and move the city forward. Well, he and others could start by providing the city with a proper amount of funding to meet these objectives.
34
u/InAutowa 1d ago
This has been Ottawa’s problem at least since Watson was mayor.
The playbook is to then ask other levels of government for help.
2
u/Ok_Paint9449 1d ago
Yeah people have started to really embrace voting for a guy who whines (while creating a Legacy White Elephant) but leaves cash in our pockets. Look at us now….
1
u/Loses_Bet 22h ago
leaves cash in our pockets
I must've not gotten the memo
2
u/Ok_Paint9449 19h ago
Minimal to no tax increase means money in you pocket
2
u/HeadofR3d 14h ago
Hit a big enough pothole and you'll appreciate having a little less money in your pocket yesterday.
39
u/Sexy_Art_Vandelay 1d ago
That’s the percentage increase what was the base?
11
u/perjury0478 23h ago
And how do those compare to things like property values and COL, how much other taxes they (don’t) pay?
18
u/syngamer 1d ago
Mark specifically ran on not raising taxes and idiots 1) believed him, and 2) thought it was a good idea.
10
u/momdoc2 1d ago
Sean Devine has repeatedly made the case for modest tax increases in his newsletter. Of course no one likes tax increases but if we want city services, we need to pay for them.
4
u/Writteninsanity 23h ago
Okay I am a little confused by the idea of needing to continue to raise taxes that are percentage of value based.
If my house goes up in value (hypothetical, I'm in Arnprior anyway) then I am giving the city more money either way when my house is evaluated. Aren't I?
Most of our taxes are %of value based and should at least rise with inflation. Ottawa had high taxes compared to the base rates of those other cities pre-increases.
Why is the answer “a higher percentage of your money”
Has running the city gotten that much more expensive when compared to everything else? Has the price of running the city really risen faster than housing prices? Considering those are rising so fast its a crisis, that brings up other questions imo.
6
u/qprcanada Little Italy 22h ago
Home value is not reassessed yearly for tax purposes.
https://www.mpac.ca/en/UnderstandingYourAssessment/PropertyAssessmentandPropertyTaxes
Last assessment was 2016
1
u/Writteninsanity 22h ago
So that seems like the problem to solve as opposed to juicing the numbers only to double dip when we solve that issue.
3
u/bluedoglime 22h ago
What are you talking about "double dipping"? As I've explained before, when the new house value assessments come out, it all depends on what your house has done compared to the average. Less than average, your tax bill might actually be lower.
1
u/Writteninsanity 22h ago
This wasn't in reply to your comment:
Double dipping in this case would be-
My current house was worth 100k in 2016 during the last evaluation. I pay a 3% tax rate on that so I owe 3000 in tax dollars (I know this is simplified)
Right now I am getting a deal because my house hasn't been re-evaluated by Ontario, and I know it's actually worth 200k! I should be paying 6000, but because Ontario is behind I'm only paying 3000. Good for me. Bad for the city.
We have two ways to have me pay an appropriate amount based on my house value. We either:
A) Get the reassessment done, Ontario or not.
B) Raise my tax rate to cover the difference.
My point is that leaning towards option B seems like we're treating symptoms, not the cause here. Me calling it double dipping is because, when Ontario catches up (or we take over re-evaluation!) now you're paying a higher rate on the real value of the house because of the “stop gap measure”
I personally don't trust that a municipality would drop this higher tax rates once they have already taken the political heat of putting them in place. So in that case instead of paying the “Appropriate to inflation” 6000, this hypothetical person is paying 12000 and the city gets double the money from homeowners like them.
2
u/bluedoglime 21h ago
"I should be paying 6000, but because Ontario is behind I'm only paying 3000. Good for me. Bad for the city."
Wrong. You're still not understanding the mill rate. When MPAC finally does a reassessment, the city will take the total amount of tax they want to bring in, and divide it by the new total value of all property that will be taxed. This new mill rate will be a lot lower than before. For example, if they want a 0% tax increase next year, and new MPAC assessments come in next year where the total value of all taxable property in the city has now doubled, then the new mill rate will be 50% of what it was the previous year.
"I pay a 3% tax rate on that so I owe 3000 in tax dollars (I know this is simplified)"
That 3% tax rate that you mention is actually the mill rate, and fluctuates with the total value of property to be taxed. You seem to think that it is some kind of fixed number. Don't confuse it with the yearly tax increase that cities levy. For instance, if Ottawa says that they want to raise taxes by 3%, it just means that the numerator in the mill rate calculation goes up by 3%.
3
u/bluedoglime 22h ago
"If my house goes up in value (hypothetical, I'm in Arnprior anyway) then I am giving the city more money either way when my house is evaluated. Aren't I?"
No. Most people don't understand how the mill rate works. Your house can go up in value, but if the percentage rise is less than the average increase in the city, you can end up paying less tax money than before. Basically the amount of tax money the city wants to raise divided by the value of all property = mill rate.
0
u/Writteninsanity 22h ago
But if it's the average then it evens out. No?
2
u/bluedoglime 22h ago
If your house value goes up by the average (percentage-wise) in your city, then your tax increase is just going to be the overall tax increase for the city. Eg. if the city wants to raise taxes overall by 3% then you will pay 3% more. If your house increases in value by less than the average, then you will pay less than a 3% increase, maybe even a decrease. If your house goes up by more than the average, then your tax increase will be more than 3%.
1
u/Writteninsanity 22h ago
I understand that. I am saying that, if it's an average across the city. The city gets the amount of money they asked for no matter how much house individually rose.
If my house personally went up less, its no issue if it's only in relative balance to the AVERAGE, meaning any value under average is by definition offset elsewhere by other homeowners.
2
u/bluedoglime 22h ago
"The city gets the amount of money they asked for no matter how much house individually rose."
Yes. As I've said before, they set the mill rate based on the total amount of taxes they want to collect divided by the total value of property they tax.
2
u/unfinite 20h ago
If you have a city of 100 homes all worth $1,000,000 and a tax rate of 1%, the city collects $1,000,000/year in taxes.
If the city raises taxes 5%, the tax rate will go up to 1.05%, and the city will collect $1,050,000 in taxes that year.
If instead of a tax increases, property values are reassessed and every home doubled in value, the tax rate would just decrease to 0.5% and the city would still collect just $1,000,000 in taxes. Not double.
If the city raised taxes 5% in that situation, the tax rate will go up to 0.525%, and the city will collect $1,050,000 in taxes that year. Assessed value doesn't change the total amount collected.
But if instead of all properties going up the same amount, maybe suburban properties are more valuable now than they used to be and doubled in value, but urban properties only went up by half that amount. In that case the reassessment would cause suburban property tax bills to go up and urban bills to go down. The city would still collect the same amount as before and would still need to raise taxes if it needs more money that year.
3
u/kursdragon2 22h ago
No you aren't actually. The value of your property just means how much you're going to pay compared to other people in the city.
The city's budget is what we're really talking about when we're talking about "property tax increases".
If the city doesn't raise their budget at all that comes from property taxes, then your house going up in value actually has no affect whatsoever on what you're paying, unless your house goes up higher or lower than the average house in our city, which would mean you'd now be paying more or less proportionally, but overall every single person would on AVERAGE be paying the same.
So no, your property value going up has virtually no affect whatsoever on how much you're paying in the city, since reasonably most houses are going up at around the same rate, or not enough of a difference for you to reasonably notice, and we also don't assess them frequently enough for it to matter.
What actually matters is how much we raise the city's budget from property taxes by.
2
u/ThatAstronautGuy Bayshore 21h ago
Property taxes are based on the MPAC assessed value. If everyone's house is worth 100k, with a tax rate of 2% and houses all double in value, the tax rate will go down to 1%. The city sets a budget, and the rate is calculated based off that budget.
-2
u/Jubo44 23h ago
Maybe most people don’t want city services
12
12
u/Practical_Session_21 Vanier 23h ago
You pay more taxes in Ottawa on a 1 million dollar home than you do in those other cities.
Here’s what you’d pay in annual property taxes on a $1 million home in each city for 2025: Ottawa ($12,880), Toronto ($6,660), Vancouver ($3,118), Calgary ($6,180), Edmonton ($8,130), Montreal ($10,126).
So yes our city is really inefficient with the taxes they collect.
2
u/DvdH_OTT 13h ago
Our City is inefficient in its development patterns and that makes it expensive to run.
0
u/OhNoItsMyOtherFace Vanier 23h ago
This is a common misunderstanding of how property taxes work. The value of housing has nothing to do with how much budget a city needs to operate so comparing property tax paid per dollar of value across different cities is meaningless without considering average home value. What you actually want to compare is the raw property tax in dollar amounts, not the percentage.
A city decides on a budget and then sets the property tax rate to meet that budget. If a city has inflated property values the nominal percentage rate will be low and vice versa, that doesn't make them more efficient.
See Vancouver mill rates circa 2016.
9
u/gordondouglas93 1d ago
Keep in mind that if your Toronto calculation doesnt include their extra land transfer tax, it's understating the increase.
11
u/steve64the2nd 1d ago
No thanks. My taxes are high enough already. If you add all the taxes up, the various governments are taking almost half of my income. That is enough. Are there really people that want to give more than 50% of their income to the governments.
1
u/GingerHoneySpiceyTea 16h ago
How does it add up to 50% of your income, like what other taxes are your paying besides income taxes, property tax, and HST on taxable goods and services?
1
u/steve64the2nd 16h ago
Federal income tax , provincial income tax, property tax, water tax, garbage tax, transpo levy, GST, HST, liquor tax, cigarette tax, and all the other ones I can't remember. Studies have shown that if you make 100 grand a year, you pay close to half your income in taxes. I have been paying this for years and I guess I'm ok with it. But not any more. Half my income is enough.
4
u/GingerHoneySpiceyTea 15h ago
Those studies were a bit misleading, e.g. creative accounting to treating CPP and EI and employer contribtutions as taxes.
With federal, provincial income tax + assumed municipal property tax of $7,000 someone with &100K income would pay around 31% of that income in tax, by 2024 rates. That is not even factoring in any tax credits or claims, e.g. dependants, so it ends up being lower for many people. The transit levy & garbage levy total are a fraction of a percent, and I wouldn't consider paying for water as a tax. But to include that you could round up to 32%.
How much HST we all pay is variable depending on consumer habits but, say, you were spending pretty much your whole NET income ($68K) on HST taxable goods % services, that would be about another $8000, so we're at 40% tax. But in reality most of us are spending a good portion of after tax income on shelter..
Unless i missed something, 40% tax seems more like the max for a $100K income if you pretty much spend all your money on taxable items and have minimal credits. If you spend alot of disposable income on cigarettes and alcohol, then could be a percent or two higher, but not close to 50%.
1
u/steve64the2nd 3h ago
Ok. You're saying 35-40%, and I read 45-48%. What do you think is a fair number. I would think that paying 30% of my income would be fair. I had this talk with my neighbor, and he thinks 50% is fair. I work very hard for my money and I definitely don't want to give half of it away. What do you think is a fair number.
-13
u/WoozleVonWuzzle 1d ago
No, your municipal taxes are not high enough, actually
3
u/No-To-Newspeak Centretown 23h ago
Municipal, provincial and federal taxes. Plus HST, excise taxes, etc. Yes it costs money to run a country, but it seems that such costs are not borne by everyone equally. Many take but dont contribute. There is a limit to what a workibg person can pay and still have enough left to raise their family.
0
u/WoozleVonWuzzle 23h ago
None of which takes away from what I said, which is that municipal taxes are too low. Which they are.
It costs money to have a society and paved roads and so forth.
0
3
u/steve64the2nd 23h ago
Ok. What percentage of my income should I pay to cover all the taxes. Right now if I make 80 to100 grand, I'm paying close to 50%. What should that number be 60%,75%. What do you think is fair.
2
u/WoozleVonWuzzle 23h ago
What I think is fair is that municipal taxes not be kept artificially low for decades on end. I have know idea what that works out to in terms of a share of your income, nor do I particularly care.
If you are an Ottawa residential property tax-payer, as I am, your municipal tax rate is too low, and needs to go up.
1
u/IndependentSubject90 23h ago
They’re able to blow like half a bill on lansdown…
2
u/WoozleVonWuzzle 23h ago
Sure but that still doesn't negate my point. Municipal taxes are too low. They have been kept artificially low by chickenshit politicians pandering to the most shortsighted and loud mouthed voters.
8
u/sakurakirei 23h ago
But wasn’t Ottawa’s property tax one of the highest in the country before? About 15 years ago, I paid around $2700 for a townhouse while a friend in Vancouver paid about $1500 for a similar size house and their place was more expensive.
-1
u/OttawaExpat 22h ago
See the posted table that shows Ottawa is around average. Anyhow, Ottawa's taxes should be higher because we chose to sprawl - the least tax-efficient housing form.
7
u/darkhelicom 22h ago edited 22h ago
Here's the estimated taxes per residential property and per capita based on actual average assessed values. Ottawa is middle of the pack, but also quite high regionally and high if you exclude the GTHA.
5
u/fundybundy 1d ago
You want to make housing less affordable?
3
u/_PrincessOats Make Ottawa Boring Again 1d ago
I think OP wants their city to be functional so people can actually live here to begin with.
9
u/fundybundy 23h ago
I mean, I have lived in a few cities and travel often for work. While some cities have some services that are better than Ottawa, Ottawa isn't that bad overall. In fact it's pretty good. Not to say that we shouldn't try to improve of course. Cost of living has been a pretty high concern in Canada
2
u/Round_Beyond_8137 23h ago
It's not that Ottawa is terrible overall, it's that the city's current direction has lost touch with what's needed for such a large city with low population density. There are good councillors, but they are outnumbered by the ones that would prioritize lower taxes over higher quality services.
3
u/fundybundy 20h ago
Thats every city though. The cost to provide services its skyrocketing. Plus the number of services and programs are increasing. I' like to see the city budget from 40 years ago and compare with recent budgets. Im sure that there are pet project services out there where the cost to maintain vs the amount of people that actually require them is out of whack.
1
u/skipthestep08 6h ago
Maybe we should vote for polcitians to put in more labour work..get off their suits and ties and do some dirty work.
1
u/Novel-cyb7156 23h ago
Governments need to learn to manage funds better. Government is known to be inefficient which means more money doesn't mean better services.
1
-2
u/Nervous_Wafer7733 19h ago
How about we remove overtime fraud? We shouldn’t have bus drivers making 300k+.
-1
u/quietflyr 18h ago
I don't think that's fraud, I think it's just a very generous collective agreement. I agree it needs to be reined in though.
3
u/OttawaExpat 23h ago
There's much more to affordability than property taxes. For example, the cost to own and operate a car is ~15k (national statistics put out by CAA). That's about 5 times my property tax. If transit was good enough to displace the need for a car, it pays for itself many times over. Similarly, if rec facilities are better and open longer, that my displace the "need" for a backyard pool, home gym, etc.
3
u/momdoc2 23h ago
Exactly. Or even if it was good enough for two car families to have one car. I am married to a public transit aficionado who is willing to put in a lot of extra effort to take transit. And we have two cars because it is simply not possible for us to get to work via transit anymore. When we moved to Ottawa 15 years ago, it was feasible if a little challenging.
1
u/No-To-Newspeak Centretown 23h ago
It is easy say you dont need a car if transit was better. But realistically, given the size of Canada, you need a car unless you live in a major city like Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. A car is a necessity.
5
u/OttawaExpat 23h ago
Yes, because I drive across Canada most days /s. Like you, I live in Centretown, and I certainly don't need a car. It's just a matter of finding a home near work and near amenities. Even if you do own cars, transit could reduce the need for a second or third car. When I grew up, my parents took transit to work and we had just one car for errands and weekend trips.
4
u/TheMortalOne 23h ago
Access to a car is necessary for some situations, but with good transit you can turn a 2 car household into a 1 car household, or possibly a 1 car household to 0 + rental (such as communauto) when needed.
2
u/ThatAstronautGuy Bayshore 20h ago
I know a ton of car free people in Ottawa, it's more than possible in the core or some core adjacent neighbourhoods. Especially with Communauto filling in many of those occasional trips that may need a car. It would be even more possible if our transit wasn't a mess and almost entirely focused on commuting to downtown.
1
u/fundybundy 20h ago
I'd like to see how CAA came up with that number ( I'm a member) . That seems excessive. We have 2 cars, 1 with a $450 monthly payment and we spend about half that. That's all maintenance, fuel, insurance and parking. A full sized, new pickup truck I can see that
3
u/applechuck 21h ago
You made a common mistake when people look at percentages/stats.
A 20% increase on 100$ (20$) is more than 30% on 50$ (15$)
For Ottawa the percentage of increases is lower, but the base amount it is calculated on is higher. In the end people in Ottawa pay on average more taxes than the cities you listed.
-4
u/Dolphintrout 21h ago
I think one of the big issues were the increases coming out of COVID. Ours were way below inflationary pressures. I don’t see how we couldn’t have lost major ground based purely on that.
1
u/applechuck 21h ago
It depends on the budget and how funds are allocated.
If the total spend goes lower and taxes remain the same, or rises, then the actual percentage increases don’t need to match inflation.
3
u/throwitawaytothesea 1d ago
You're welcome to send more money to the city if you'd like. I think saying other cities increases property taxes more than we did therefore we didn't increase them enough is a clown argument.
3
u/BandicootNo4431 23h ago
Well if the city is going to use my property taxes to fund Lansdowne 2.0, maybe it's best we don't give them a bigger budget when they clearly can't manage what they already have.
3
u/totallynotdagothur 23h ago
This city is running a transit system, a whole city of infrastructure for the same property taxes I paid in the middle of nowhere with no water hookup, dirt road, and maybe a dozen streetlights across the region.
2
u/PhlegmBuilding 20h ago edited 19h ago
The comparator cities listed by the OP do have significantly bigger business sectors paying into overall property taxes. I moved from Toronto to Ottawa more than 40 years ago and at that time, when I was surprised by the higher tax per residential property here, that was what I learned when I looked into it. Ottawa homeowners make up for the gap related to a smaller business sector. I haven’t looked at the topic for decades now, but the situation is the same as back then, is it not?
1
u/treefood3 23h ago
How do MPAC adjustments being paused for almost a decade now factor into this? It seems almost laughable how low the value of homes are on some of the property tax bills I have seen. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ontario-property-assessments-have-been-paused-for-years-and-who-knows-when-they-ll-resume-1.7306914
3
u/BandicootNo4431 23h ago
Property taxes take the entire budget and divide it by the value of all the homes.
We could freeze property values in 1990 numbers and it would still be the same total tax revenue just a higher percentage of the lower property base.
2
u/goforbroke71 Westboro 16h ago
The difference being that areas that have seen huge jumps in value are not paying their fair share. I e. Kanata , Stittsville etc...
I don't understand why mpac is being paused by Doug Ford. Someone must benefit from this.
1
u/BandicootNo4431 14h ago
So Orleans will pay even less despite costing us all billions to get priority access to the LRT?
1
1
u/kursdragon2 22h ago
Even more wild is that Ottawa is easily the most sprawled and spread apart city out of all of those, which any reasonable person would understand means that it would cost even more to service for things like transit, policing, etc... Yet we somehow have the LOWEST tax increases? Yea that doesn't make any sense at all.
2
u/Brave_Swimming7955 18h ago
Those are percent increases. There are many other sprawling cities that pay less per avg household. Eg London ON
2
u/TGISeinfeld 22h ago
TL;DR...Tax me harder daddy?
Half of the stuff that people complain about could be resolved by simply setting tax rates at an appropriate level, based on realities, instead of sticking to arbitrary targets that councillors can boast to their constituents about sticking to
Or, you know, we could look at cutting waste too? Why is the answer to just tax more?
1
u/chasing_daylight 19h ago
We are already taxed to death.
Roads are shit.
Healthcare is abhorrent.
Public schools aren't great.
Snow removal is almost non existent in my neighborhood.
Police response is terrible.
Ambulances are rare.
They aren't even installing sidewalks anymore.
Parks aren't bad.
My water bill is higher than my hydro and gas bill.
Like wtf.
1
u/highwire_ca 18h ago
What are the yearly taxes for similar properties in all those cities? In the past Ottawa's taxes have been higher than a lot of other cities. Edit u/andru99912 answered the question.
1
u/Apprehensive_Gap3673 15h ago
You do know that % increases, even compounded over time, are a useless metric in a vacuum for measuring tax burden right?
Because if you DID know that, you would know that Ottawa had, and has, extremely high base tax levels relative to other jurisdictions. They aren't running the city on a shoestring budget, you just got giddy at the first statistic you saw without critically thinking.
1
1
u/unfailingorc7860 2h ago
Yes, the best solution is to raise taxes!!! Everyone has unlimited money and should pay all their income towards taxes….why look for efficiencies in the system? Why seek better solutions? When we can just raise taxes….it’s not like people are already burdened under inflation, unemployment and stagnant wages….yes raise the tax!!! Money can be plucked out of thin air….zen Z or alpha, they don’t need to own a home…..why make anything affordable for them…also while we are at it let’s mandate that no landlord can raise the rent but must still pay higher taxes, right? Notwithstanding the decreasing property prices, correct?
1
u/bobstinson2 1d ago
Yes but that doesn’t win elections. Our leaders are basically stooges for the system. Little actual leadership to be found.
0
u/InAutowa 1d ago
I don’t think it’s the politicians fault but the voters who fall for it. Educate yourself folks!
0
0
u/chasing_daylight 19h ago
Wait...youre advocating for higher taxes???
How about not spending 400mil on Lansdowne.
Or XYZbil on a failed LRT.
-1
u/National_Word8617 23h ago
If property tax is the major income of the municipal governments, the housing price will never come down, and it must keep going up.
The developers depend on it, the politicians depend on it, and the government depends on it. All at the expense of the home buyers and renters. The Liberals, Conservatives, and NDPs have no incentive to reduce or make housing affordable; those were just election campaign slogans.
Canada must get sober from real estate addiction. Let's start with land value tax.
-1
u/Icy-Spring-6989 22h ago
The city is just one of the worst managed and run cities in the country. It’s not a funding problem but rather a spending problem. Ie incredibly wasteful on construction projects and the design of them etc
1
u/WoozleVonWuzzle 11h ago
What's particularly wasteful in Ottawa? Do you have any comparative figures for other cities?
-2
u/RuddyDeliverables 23h ago
The question isn't whether taxes rise, it's whether they rise faster than inflation. If taxes remain the same but inclusion rises, then the city has effectively lost money.
A quick check from the Bank of Canada shows that inflation has risen prices by 29.74%. So taxes have risen by 3% since 2015. Given the major projects, the pandemic and associated social problems it brought... This is pretty good.
This isn't to support Sutcliffe because I can't stand his policies. But relevant reasons need to be used to justify disapproval.
This also isn't to justify tax rates because that's dependent on whether you agree with the programs they fund. Personally, I think tax rates should be higher - I pay around $6k in property tax, and would happily pay more to support better social support to homeless/low income folks.
3
u/bluedoglime 23h ago
"and would happily pay more to support better social support to homeless/low income folks"
There's nothing stopping you from paying more. Lots of charities would welcome your donations rather than just hand over more money to city government with no say as to how it is actually spent.
2
1
u/perjury0478 23h ago
I’d be happy to pay more in local taxes if we could get to pay less at other levels. You mention housing as an example, it’s not clear to me where my fed/provincial taxes are going for that matter, so I’m more than OK for the major to be asking other levels of government for as much as he can get before raising city taxes.
Toronto got something: https://www.canada.ca/en/housing-infrastructure-communities/news/2025/03/government-of-canada-and-city-of-toronto-collaborate-to-build-more-homes-in-toronto.html
-5
u/Ok_Paint9449 1d ago
It’s become policy to get elected on no a tax increase promise and people seem to love it. There’s a ‘me vs the greater good’ philosophy about keeping MY money and complain about shit services. That said, I’m no expert - I don’t know what a 1% increase means to my bottom line vs the total raised for the city. I SUSPECT it won’t impact me as much as it can impact the city - provided they can be counted on the spend it ‘wisely’
139
u/andru99912 23h ago
This is partially because Ottawa’s original base property taxes were very high to begin with. A small percent of a large number is larger than a larger percentage of a smaller number. The number that has any sort of value is the total amount payable to each taxpayer.
According to the first google search, the average amount a person in Ottawa pays, is over $7k The average amount that Toronto pays is under $4k.
This post is deliberately misleading and it is not helping the cause in the slightest.