2023 Tax Rates

City of Duncan taxpayers are invited to get informed and provide feedback on the proposed tax rates for 2023.

From November 2022 through to March 2023, the City has held a variety of public committee of the whole meetings to discuss the 2023 budget and five-year financial plan. A public town hall meeting was held on January 16^th at City Hall, and online consultation was held from January 16-31^st to invite public comments on the financial plan. After this process, the five-year financial plan bylaw is now finalized showing an 11.3% increase in taxes of which 2.4% is funded by new construction leaving an 8.9% increase for existing taxpayers (see documents). The five-year financial plan bylaw was adopted on April 3^rd.

Now that the amount of tax to be collected has been determined, we need to decide how the tax will be distributed among the different classes.

BC Assessment indicates that the average home in Duncan has increased by 13.8% and the average business has increased by 4.2% from 2022 values. The Tax Rate Information (see documents) provides a history of the assessed property values and comparative tax rates for neighbouring jurisdictions.

As part of setting the tax rates, the City has the ability to smooth out the fluctuations in assessments so that one class of taxpayers is not experiencing much larger increases than another class. This process results in a commercial-to-residential property tax ratio, which we call a multiple. The proposed 2023 taxes use a multiple of 3.2 to achieve an equitable tax increase between commercial and residential tax classes, which results in the following:

• a residential tax rate of 2.9658
• a commercial tax rate of 9.5159
• average residential home municipal tax increase of $144 (10.4%)
• average commercial municipal tax increase of $606 (10.4%)

If you have questions or comments, please add them below.