The City of Merritt stands to increase its tax revenue in 2018 — even without raising rates.
“The secret’s out, it’s good news for Merritt,” director of finance Sheila Thiessen told council at a budget meeting held Feb. 6.
If rates are not increased this year, the City of Merritt still expects to collect an additional $125,000 in taxes over last year.
Despite seeing some reductions — the bulk of which stems from the shutdown of the Tolko sawmill — the municipality is coming out ahead thanks to revenue from other assessment classes.
“We did lose some of the assessment base for the mill in heavy industry, but we’ve had incredible growth. Our real estate market’s been booming,” Thiessen told council, noting there was a record number of transactions last year.
Property assessments were expected to drop after the Tolko sawmill closed in December of 2016, but there was an unexpected increase in real estate values and growth in new construction that offset the loss for 2018.
The City of Merritt is expected to collect an estimated $8,273,473 in taxes this year from its seven different tax classes.
Residential properties are forecasted to make up about 45 per cent of the tax base in 2018, collecting a total of approximately $3,750,000. Business class will collect about third of the tax base to the tune of about $2,460,000.
Last year, taxation made up 40 per cent of the city’s revenue sources, which was the largest piece of the pie followed by grants at 30 per cent and user fees at 18 per cent.
