Discussion Property Taxes - why is no one talking about this?

[Leovinus]

Ontario hasn’t updated property assessments since 2016. That means your property taxes are still based on values from nearly a decade ago—even though real estate prices have doubled or more in many areas.

The reassessment freeze has been quietly extended year after year, not because the system works, but because if they lifted it, the consequences would be severe. Many homeowners—especially in rural or modest homes that have inflated in value on paper—could suddenly see massive tax hikes. In some cases, property taxes could double or triple.

It’s not just about fairness. It’s about survival. People on fixed incomes, retirees, and working families would be priced out of homes they’ve lived in for decades—not because they bought mansions, but because the system finally decided to cash in on inflation.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a ticking policy time bomb, and most people don’t even know it’s there.

Have you been reassessed recently? Built something and got hit? Seen your taxes spike unexpectedly? Personally I know several families who decided to build or otherwise do something that resulted in an automatic reevaluation of their property taxes - and ended up seeing their tax bill double or quadruple.

Share your story. We need to start talking about this—before it’s too late to do anything about it.

 

[d01tg0d0wn]

It is happening in a lot of communities. Tax increases as high as 300%. Some communities are completely abandoning municiple services and government as well as municiple programs and municiple run centers and facilities. These municipalities attempted to get loans but they werent successful so the entire community is shut down. No police, no fire, no nothing. People still live there and are not abandoning their homes yet but it is a matter of time given the hopelessness of the situation.

It is insane what is happening to Canada

I suspect it will happen more and more that is why i workout daily, arm myself and prep.

People have no idea what is coming but some of us do

 

[Leovinus]

That’s crazy. How remote are these communities? Can you name names?

 

[d01tg0d0wn]

Danford Lake, Quebec

Is one such place

Why is this village in Quebec facing a 370 per cent property tax hike?

Residents in the small Quebec village of Danford Lake may soon be priced out of their homes, as property valuations and taxes are set to skyrocket.

www.ctvnews.ca

370% tax hike

Municipality collapsed just a few months ago

Not much news on it since

Township of Fauquier-Strickland

Facing 300% tax hike, northern Ont. community to dissolve Aug. 1

Heavily in debt and looking at a 300 per cent tax increase, the Township of Fauquier-Strickland has instead voted to end all municipal operations and layoff all staff effective Aug. 1.

www.ctvnews.ca

300% increase same thing

Complete collapse

My theory is they want to begin the drive to get people in the cities for more control.

Its good to keep eyes on this to see what is occuring. Watch for patterns

 

[Leovinus]

@d01tg0d0wn that’s crazy and exactly what’s going to happen. They’ll roll it out in stages, spread across a few years. And do it checkerboard style across the country. But you will eventually own nothing and be ‘happy’.

 

[border_humper]

@d01tg0d0wn Way better off to have the town end municipal operations in that scenario and the people who still live there can privately fill potholes or drill wells.

 

[RightOfSask]

There are abandoned towns in Saskatchewan all over the place. But that's more due to the modernization of the highway system. Back in the days every small town had their own grain elevator, school, community hall and so on. Then in the 80s the highway system was expanded and modernized. Bigger and faster trucks could now easily transport grain from one point to another. Grain elevators were shutting down, jobs were lost, farms consolidated, even less jobs, less tax income for towns, more and more people lost their jobs and moved away, a death spiral for a lot of towns. There are hundreds of towns all over the province which lost 80% of their population between 1980 and 2000. Quite haunting if you visit them. The roads are starting to grow over. The school building looks something like out of Silent Hill and so on. For example the town of Trampling Lake. Over 200 people lived there in 1980. Today less than 50 are still there.

https://www.reddit.com/r/saskatchewan/s/593GGAil7a

 

[RightOfSask]

In my area we have a reassessment every four years. I built a new house last year and the next scheduled reassessment is in 2029, so no tax hike until then. And as far as I see prices in my neck of the woods are kinda stable, so I don't anticipate a big increase.

 

[Jack Layton]

Bringing in as many jeets possible before forcing people out of bungalows and making way for condos.

 

[CaptainTrouble]

Property taxes ought to be illegal. The idea of government just raising taxes on home owners and then exppropriating their assets after they can't pay the tax is so immoral. Only a staunch communist would support something like that.

The provinces should ban municipalities from using property taxes to raise revenue, then have each province raise PST by 10% and distribute the PST revenue to each municipality based on population size.

 

[Jack Layton]

They are fine but not when 50% of the budget is for stupid buses home owners don’t use.

 

[416_Refugee]

Centralized tax collection and distribution sounds more communist to me. However small, you will have more influence at the municipal level than the provincial level. You're also going to get the "hogtown" problem, with large cities sucking in all the resources, which is how Toronto got it's nickname.

Also, a consumption tax to maintain municipal infrastructure? Dunno about that one either... the large family jammed in the tiny house/property gets to pay more taxes than the low-consumption single person living in a McMansion, so they have a harder time getting ahead?

 

[Thinker]

You will always going to have centralization of power and industry in large cities. Nothing much you can do about that always existed since civilization started.

You can looks at Georgism as a different type of property tax. Documentary made a while ago explains it better then I can:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kD_E8e7z-8

 

[416_Refugee]

You will always going to have centralization of power and industry in large cities. Nothing much you can do about that always existed since civilization started.

Of course. My point was that centralizing tax collection/distribution to the province, eliminating the municipalities will only worsen the problem.

 

[Hirudinea]

@Thinker

Georgism, that's something different.

 

[Squishybear]

I was late on those taxes this year… not sure why I even paid honestly. Not like I get anything in return. Sick and tired of paying out of my ass for shit.

Garbage pickup?
No.
Natural gas?
No.
Power that doesn’t go out every time someone sneezes?
No.
First world country infrastructure?
Ahahahahahahahah, nopers.
Health care?
Bwahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Though mind you the hubby got lucky and got himself a good GP somehow!
Education?
Indoctrination maybe.
Public safety?
Yeah no.

 

[RightOfSask]

not sure why I even paid honestly

I might have found your issue.

 

[416_Refugee]

This is where rural areas get fucked - small population spread over a wide area is inefficient unfortunately. These are the sacrifices that must be made to put some space between yourself and The Brown Stain. (credit to @Picard )

This is why there's been such a push to increase density in the large cities, the sprawl has overextended their finances.

 

[d01tg0d0wn]

Its not so much this

Corruption is the main issue

With socialism eventually you run out of other peoples money and this is what is occuring in my opinion. Everyone fed their frens dollars that they shouldnt have because of reasons and now the municipality collapses under the weight of it all.

 

[border_humper]

@d01tg0d0wn Plus all the municipalities are unionized. If that were not permitted and they had to run municipal services without that pressure, municipal taxes wouldn’t be such a big deal.

 

[416_Refugee]

If I remember correctly, the assessment only drives relative adjustments. So if my house increased in value about the same as everyone else, I won't see any changes (as a result of the assessment). If I got lucky and my street increased in value because of x, then I get bumped up more, and vice versa.

I've been through 2 reassessments and nothing really came of it. because my immediate area all rose in value together and I didn't do anything major with my house like knock it down and build a McMansion. Those people got hammered, got like 2-3x assessments. because they doubled the value of the property by doing the rebuild.