The City of Calgary: Revenue Neutral Property

Accountability

Revenue neutral is a policy that means whether year to year assessments increase or decrease, due to changes in market values, no new taxes will be collected as a result of the reassessment.

The intent of The City of Calgary's revenue neutral policy is to ensure that:

Tax revenues do not change automatically with assessment changes due to market fluctuations.
Any tax change brought forward by The City is communicated through the budgetary process.

With each year's assessment roll, a revenue neutral tax rate is established, based on the application of these principles.

Transparency

Another benefit of the revenue neutral tax policy and tax rate is to explain how an
individual's property taxes have changed due to that property's year-to-year change in assessment.

Each property's change in taxes, using the revenue neutral tax rate, occurs because the process of assessing properties each year results in taxes being re-distributed among properties. Compared to the city-wide typical per cent change, if a property's year-to-year per cent change in assessment is:

� Less � That property's revenue neutral taxes will decrease.

� The same � That property's revenue neutral taxes will stay about the same.

� More � That property's revenue neutral taxes will increase.

It's on your Notice

Each Property Assessment Notice clearly shows that property's:
� Previous year's tax amount
� Current year's revenue neutral taxes

See the Notice for more information.

How revenue neutral works for you?

The City begins by determining the typical assessment value increase for residential properties for the whole city (it means we calculate an aggregate mean).

If your property value increases by the same amount as the typical increase (aggregate mean), the amount you pay in property taxes will likely be unchanged as a result of the reassessment. If your value is above the typical increase, you will likely see a tax increase as a result of the reassessment. And if it's below, you will likely see a tax decrease.

This of course is based on The City's property tax budget staying unchanged from one year to the next.

How Revenue Neutral Works - A Typical Cycle PDF File (406 KB)