montreal set to unveil new three-year property assessment roll
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montreal is set to table the new three-year property assessment roll for residential and non-residential owners across the island on wednesday, an augury of whose municipal tax bills might rise next year.
the city’s online property roll was inaccessible on tuesday, with a message stating that a new roll will be available as of 11:30 a.m. wednesday. as of noon tuesday, the city still had not publicly announced it will table the new roll on wednesday.
the presentation of the new roll coincides this year with the start of a municipal election campaign.
property re-assessment is carried out every three years and establishes the value on which municipalities on the island charge their property tax rates. for the city of montreal, property taxes make up over 63 per cent of the revenue that pays for municipal services.
the new valuations will come into effect on jan. 1.
an increased assessment does not mean a corresponding increase in property taxes. that’s because a municipality can lower its tax rate by the average increase in assessments to negate the impact of the higher assessments. however, in that case, property owners whose assessments increase above the average can still expect to see some increase in their tax bill.
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montreal applies separate tax rates on residential and non-residential properties.
and montreal’s tax rate on non-residential properties is on average about 4.5 times higher than residential tax rates, the biggest gap between the two sectors in any major canadian city, jean-philippe meloche, a professor in université de montréal’s school of urban planning and landscape architecture, said.
the new assessments will only be known tomorrow, but meloche said he anticipates the new roll will create a dilemma for whoever wins the nov. 2 municipal election.
“i imagine that non-residential values have increased much less quickly than residential values,” meloche said of what he anticipates in the new roll.
“the consequence of this is that if we keep the rates in roughly the same ranges as they are now, it means that residential taxes will increase faster than those for commerce and industry.”
the next administration that will present montreal’s 2026 operating budget will be hard-pressed to promise it will contain residential tax increases that aren’t too high when inflation has driven up costs — even if that’s what citizens want to hear, meloche said.
the city’s tax revenue is roughly split between the residential and non-residential sectors, he said.
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“if the industry-commerce portion decreases, and the city wants to maintain the same level of spending, then inevitably the residential portion must increase,” meloche said.
on the flip side, he said, “we can absolutely maintain the same tax burden (as now) by increasing non-residential tax rates more than residential rates to maintain the burden on each party, but in my opinion it will be difficult to do so.”
earlier this week, the head of the downtown merchants’ association warned that three-quarters of downtown workers felt the area had deteriorated and 78 per cent felt unsafe, according to surveys. glenn castanheira, the executive director of montréal centre-ville, also spoke of an average 15-per-cent decline in downtown property values, which he warned could be catastrophic for city finances. downtown generates about 23 per cent of montreal’s revenue, he said.
the current assessment roll was tabled in 2022, at which time residential assessments saw the largest jump since 2007.
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