David Blitt is warning other business owners to check their property information on the City’s assessment files, after discovering a costly mistake.
Blitt recently discovered the tax assessment for his Bridgeland business, Troy Shoppe Jewellers, was based on inaccurate information.
The building and land were listed at 15,000 square feet, instead of 10,000 – that’s 5,000 square feet bigger than they actually are.
“So in six years, I probably paid anywhere between $40,000 and $60,000 too much,”said Blitt.
“At what point does the city take responsibility for the fact that they have a keying in error? A simple error … but I’m paying the tax on it.”
To complicate matters, Blitt leases the property and the landowner didn’t catch the error either.
He would like to be compensated, but under the Municipal Government Act the city can’t go back in time to repay or collect money from mistakes.
“Unfortunately… based on legislation… we have to go with information we have on file and if they do correct it, we correct it the following year,” said Theresa Schroder with the City of Calgary’s assessment department. “We really rely on the property owner to confirm that the area and the information on record is accurate.”
The city says assessors do inspections but there are too many properties to review every year.
Ronda Zang, a commercial real estate appraiser, said people should be checking their assessments but often don’t.
She said this size of error is rare, but mistakes on assessments are common.
“We should be checking it just like we check our bank statement, just like we check our credit card statement — it’s a big bill we get every year,” Zang said.
Some of the most common property assessment mistakes involve the floor space, building size, lot size, updated renovations and the zoning for the land.
Blitt has corrected the mistake for next year.