Dear residential taxpayers for 2025.
I live in Spallumcheen and have since 1973.
I wanted to send this to the paper before but decided to wait until everyone received their residential tax notice so that the pain of seeing what you have to pay is fresh in your minds.
I received mine and noticed the tax notice has, again, gone berserk with a 15.2 per cent increase over last year, which amounted to $840.34.
I'm not alone.
When I went back over my tax notices from 2020 to 2025 I noticed that my taxes went up a total 63 per cent.
In 2020, they were $4,008.20 and now $6,354.19.
In 2021, my taxes were $4,663.69. In just one year, 2022, the taxes were $5,783.20 up 24 per cent.
I sat on council in Spallumcheen for seven years and know a little more than the average taxpayer,
As councillors, hats off to the work they do to keep everything moving forward, as they deal with the usual rezoning applications, ALR applications, fire hall, joint recreation and much more to contend with.
And we have taxation.
Takes time to figure out who pays, and who gets tax exemptions such as churches, schools, nunnery and other halls and groups that are non-profit. What is left is residential, farms, commercial, industrial and raw land.
The one big problem we came up against very early in my seven years was Bill 8. In short, Bill 8 came in as a food security program that allowed farmers not to be taxed as usual leaving money in their hands to "farm back better."
How it worked was a farm building usually assessed for $1 million and taxed on that basis was now to be assessed at approximately 20 per cent or $200,000 and to be taxed as residential.
Now here is the rub, a farm building gets the same services as a home. Like public roads (maintained by Spall), fire protection from joint owned fire hall and volunteers and policing.
Now your personal home, worth say $1 million pays five times the tax that the farm building pays for the same services...nothing different.
Now that goes for a home say, at $500,000 and again the million dollar home pays twice the taxes for the same services.
Is there a more equitable way of dealing with taxation?
Let's look at it this way: the assessment department do their assessments and from this we get the average assessment through Spall.
Because of all the farm buildings, trailer parks and all the residential we have in Spall, the average assessments for 2024 is $621,645.
Therefore for residential treated buildings under Bill 8 and residential homes, whatever they are assessed, no one should pay more for taxes than that based on the bench mark of $621,645, even if your home is assessed at $2 million.
The mill rate should be set starting at $621,645. Anyone under that would have the same mill rate and pay less tax.
A $2 million farm building or trailer would pay the corresponding tax for the same services. Example, if the bench mark pays $4,000 in tax, the $200,000 home or farm building, etc., would pay $1,286.91 on the same mill rate for the same services.
As councillors across B.C., they send us to the Union of B.C. Municipalities every year. When I went in to hear about residential taxation, they emphasized that taxation above four per cent a year was unsustainable.
In Spall they are anywhere from four to five per cent. They have reached unsustainable.
The other reason I bring this forward is so that, if this is implemented, and you hear that the budget will be up four per cent in 2026, then this makes it very easy now for everyone to know that their taxes are going to go up four per cent.
If it's $4,000 in 2025, it will be $4,160. In short, everyone is paying their fair share for the same services.
Please remember that on average, there are 10 new residences constructed every year and their taxes now due say for 2026 is $40,000.
This is now $40,000 new dollars that Spall did not have in 2025, which should bring the budget increase down.
If there is anything I'm missing, please let me know.
Ed Hanoski,
past councillor
