Edmonton business owner shocked by most recent property tax notice

Watch above: An Edmonton business owner was shocked when she opened her property tax notice. As Vinesh Pratap reports, she found a huge jump in the bill.

EDMONTON – An Edmonton business owner was shocked when she opened her most recent property tax notice. Nicole Siegel, who has owned her property for more than two years, says her bill nearly doubled.

“It was kind of a take back, for sure, to see such a high amount.”

Siegel is on a monthly plan; her new bill showed a jump from just over $960 a month to $1,700 per month.

“When you stop and think about it, you try and figure out what would cause such an increase.”

She says there have been no upgrades or changes to her property, and there have been no local area improvements. Siegel phoned the city, but says she feels her concern wasn’t taken seriously.

“I definitely felt that my request to talk to someone else, go higher, do something more was going to be pushed by the wayside and it wasn’t going to go any further.”

After being contacted by Global News, the City of Edmonton responded.

“We were able to look at the details of her assessment, and in this particular case we found out that there was an error in her assessment,” says Deanne Bannerman with the City’s Assessment & Taxation Branch. “We were able to make a correction to the assessment for the property owner.”

There are more than 350,000 properties in Edmonton. This year, the city says just over 1,700 complaints were filed.

“There are going to be instances where some of the assessments may need to be reviewed, and this is where we really rely on the property owners to review their assessment notice in January,” explains Bannerman.

Siegel says because of mail delivery issues she didn’t receive her assessment at the beginning of the year, adding she didn’t expect the surprise that showed up in her mail.

With files from Vinesh Pratap, Global News.