Property Tax

Self-help Topics: (available to members and associate members)

Interested in becoming an associate member?

1- Avoiding the pitfalls: How to manage and conduct a successful appeal of your property tax assessment without the expense of a lawyer or consultant. "MUNICIPAL PROPERTY ASSESSMENT CORPORATION - A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING" by lawyer Bruce Haines (Queen's Counsel)

2- Understanding the adversarial nature of disputes between you [the taxpayer] and the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC)- a private agency employed solely by your local municipality. by Bruce Haines Q.C.

3-The judicial functions of the Assessment Review Board, its process, and the "streams" available to you for resolving disputes with MPAC. "The minimum information required for a fair hearing- to be provided as part of the pre-hearing stream"

4-About the Process: How to write an effective 'Statement of Issues' [including form, content and sample appeal strategies].

5- What to expect from MPAC.

6-How to make the Rules and Procedures of the Assessment Review Board work in your favour. Summary of the Rules of Procedure prepared by Bruce Haines Q.C.

Tips to insure a fair hearing and successful outcome.

Index to useful precedents.

2008 update on MPAC and ARB appeal procedures, by Bruce Haines Q.C.

Finding, forming or joining neighborhood networks where like-minded property owners can compare notes, share information and exchange informed advice

How to successfully appeal your assessment without a lawyer
Saturday, 03 March 2007

The Toronto Times

By William Tatsiou, former member of the Assessment Review Board and solicitor

How to successfully appeal your assessment and reduce your taxes without a lawyer. For residential appeals:

1. Serve MPAC with a Request for Reconsideration and give reasons why your assessment is too high. If you appeal and subsequently settle you get a refund of the fee. Moreover, MPAC will often agree with you and give you a reduction to avoid an appeal to the Assessment Review Board.

2. Ask MPAC for the subject Property Summary Report for your home to review and correct any errors in MPAC's records. For instance, if your home is one storey and MPAC's records show a two storey home the assessment will reflect incorrect informaiton.

3. Ask MPAC to confirm how the property was assessed and what comparables MPAC used. MPAC's Property Comparison Report is free but most homeowners fail to ask for this report and only end up getting it on the day of the hearing at the Assessment Review Board. At the hearing the owner has very little time to review MPAC's report and the owner is at a great disadvantage conducting the hearing. Here MPAC enjoys an advantage because it has access to confidential information months in advance of the hearing.

4. Prepare a list of six comparables in the vicinity and ask MPAC to prepare and provide for you the Owner's Property Comparables Report (again this is free). This will have detailed information such as total square footage, number of bathrooms and fireplaces and the quality class of the home. This information is not available from your real estate agent. Moreover, MPAC will do all your work in this regard for free. This is were the system levels the playing field. Most people do not know their rights and fail to take advantge of their legal rights. They get frustrated and angry but some of this emotion arises out of ignorance as they cannot understand the Multiple Regression Analysis Model. Therefore you should keep things simple.

5. Review all the sales of similar homes on both the Owner's Property Comparables Report and MPAC's Property Comparison Report (both prepared for you for free and will often include six comparables for both parties for a total of 12). Look at the range of sales: the high and low; look at the average (take all the sale prices and total them up and then divide by the number of sales) and median (the middle sale within the range). Do the same for the assessments (even with a sale MPAC may assess the comparable differently) . Compare the results to your assessment.

6. To adjust for larger and smaller homes you can do the same analysis on a dollar per square foot for total building area. For example, if your house is 1000 square feet and is assessment at $100,000 the assessment is $100 per square foot for total building area. Do the same for all the comparables. This allows you to compare apples and apples.

7. If your assessment is higher than the average and median you are over assessed. This an objective test. There is no emotion as mathematics and statistics do not allow for anger or other emotions that are subjective.

8. Always remember the onus is on the person complaining (most often the home owner). In some cases the mucipality or MPAC will complain your assessment is too low and they become the complainant.

9. Most home owners fail to introduce any evidence and lose before they even start as the onus is on the complainant ( the home owner in your case if you appeal your assessment).

10. In Ontario the leading case is Viva where the Divisional Court held that the best evidence of correct current value is an arm's length sale of the subject property close to the valuation date. Notwithstanding the Viva decision MPAC and some members of the Assessment Review Board may still require corroborating evidence ( such as a second sale, letter of opinion or appraisal). This is often the case where the owner purchased the property from a bank under power of sale or from an estate.

 
 

This archive contains some useful information on how to appeal your property assessment, prepared by prominent Toronto lawyer and Queen's Counsel Bruce Haines. The file includes documents, forms, and general background that will assist property owners in understanding the process.

Among other things, the self-help topics provide examples of how to write a 'request for reconsideration', and a 'statement of issues', as well as the procedure needed to level the playing field, and take advantage of the 'prehearing stream'. Online question-and-answer feedback and editorial comment is available for those needing help.

The following remarks from Mr. Haines Q.C. are dated January 1, 2004 but remain relevant to 2008 as well (see updates in italics). Mr. Haines is a past-chairman (2007-08) of the Canadian Justice Review Board.

Hi Neighbour,

In November you received our first email entitled "Municipal Property Assessment Corporation - A wolf in Sheep's Clothing." The purpose of that email was to try to give you some understanding about challenging MPAC's valuation of your property for the 2004 municipal taxation year.

Recently, MPAC has started to send out form letters to all property owners who sent MPAC a "Request for Reconsideration." The letter advises that MPAC will try to make a review before March 31st which is your deadline for filing an appeal with the Assessment Review Board. Some property owners are under the impression that unless they send MPAC a "Request for Reconsideration" they will not be entitled to bring a formal complaint or an appeal before the Assessment Review Board. This is not the case. The only consequence of not filing a "Request for Reconsideration" is that you don't get a refund of the $75 which you will have to pay the Assessment Review Board on filing appeal proceedings. In any event you are only entitled to a refund if the appeal is withdrawn before the hearing.

Included as an attachment with this email is a Summary of the new Rules of the Assessment Review Board which should help you in initiating appeal proceedings with the Board. Unless you take this step before March 31st, MPAC will not likely give your review request much consideration. Why not? Because, MPAC knows that without an appeal you have no remedy to challenge them. (In 2008 the procedure for filing a complaint has been modified to separate residential, farm, managed forest or conservation land, from other types of land. The process for the latter remains the same but the process for the former is new. Mr. Haines has prepared a 2008 update paper explaining what to do)

You don't need to hire a lawyer to attend with you before the Assessment Review Board. The attached summary should help demystify the appeal process. It will also help you in your dealings with MPAC during the "Request for Reconsideration." They should be prepared to provide you with the same information that they will have to provide should you not settle with them and proceed with the appeal.

So, what you want to do is ask MPAC for their data base on all actual sales in your neighborhood for that period. You can bet your bottom dollar that MPAC is accessing that data base. In fact MPAC probably has access to other data bases which have been paid for by public money and should therefore be freely available to you. (among other things, the "Self-help" topics listed on the left hand sidebar show how to force MPAC to disclose the information you need)

Make sure that you keep records of everything you do, and make notes of all conversations with MPAC's people, and with the people at the Assessment Review Board. Don't trust to your memory because information which you obtain today if not recorded will surely flow like water through a seive and be lost down the drain. Why not start by opening a file and placing this email in it?

Feel free to send this email to like minded property owners who are fed up with being hosed by MPAC. You might consider complaining to your local Councillor and your MPP!

note: MPAC is a corporation operated by the municipalities. The majority of MPAC's board of directors are municipal counsellors. It is not a provincial crown corporation.

note: As a result of public complaint, in 2006 the Office of the Ombudsman of Ontario issued a Report critical of MPAC's policies and procedures and propery assessments were frozen until January 2008. Key recommendations from the Ontario Ombudsman have not, as yet, been implemented.