A Toronto city councillor is pushing for changes to how property tax is appraised on Yonge Street after many businesses were recently served with costly assessments that threaten their viability.
Toronto Centre-Rosedale councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam says she will be meeting with the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) and city revenue service on Friday to talk about ways to reassess properties that saw high increases this year.
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“These property owners are feeling the heat, and many of them have said that they’re not going to be able make it to the next year,” Wong-Tam told AM 640’s Kelly Cutrara Show. “So we’re bringing MPAC to the table, and we want them to reassess those properties.”
According to Wong-Tam, the current evaluation system “takes a very broad one-size-fits-all approach” in which multi-residential industrial or commercial properties on Yonge Street are all appraised the same way.
“They are evaluated for highest and best use, which means that it doesn’t matter if you’re a two- or three-storey storefront plus apartment, or parking lot — you get assessed in exactly the same fashion as a major development site.”
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Wong-Tam added that current planning tools which MPAC uses to assess taxes are likely overvaluing the actual worth of a building and property. She worries the methodology will soon spill over to other iconic main streets such as Queen, King, or even the Danforth.
The planning staff’s strategy on Friday will start by developing a case with property owners for a reassessment, before moving to more complicated and longer-term conversations with the city and province to define a new small-business category or perhaps a smaller-building classification.