Are you building or renovating a home? Is there a change in use of your property?
If the property you own:
• is under construction or is a newly constructed building,
• is being renovated or additional structures are being built, or
• has recently had a change in the use of the property;
then your property’s value may not be fully assessed for property tax purposes.
For example, if you own a newly constructed home, your current property tax bills may be based on the assessment for the land only.
If the change to your property’s value was not processed on the annual assessment roll provided to the Town, it will not have been included on your annual property tax bills.
Supplemental tax bills will be issued to you separately from your annual property tax bills.
What can you do to prepare?
- If you have purchased a new property, made any physical changes to a property or changed the use of your property, it is recommended that you set aside funds in anticipation of supplemental tax bills, so that you will have savings available when you receive those property tax bills in the future.
- Assessed values are determined by MPAC. The Town cannot project the assessed value for your new property. In order to set aside funds in anticipation of receiving the supplemental tax bills, you can use the purchase price or construction value as a guide. Town staff cannot calculate it for you because we do not have the assessment values from MPAC. Your actual supplemental tax bills may be different than the estimate, but putting some funds aside will help.
To estimate your supplemental tax bill on a new property, construction or improvement:
- Use the purchase price (or construction value if it was built while you own it) as an estimate of the assessed value.
- Enter that estimated assessed value in the Niagara Region’s property tax calculator.
- Enter the property type, “City” (Lincoln), and Year.
- Calculate the estimated taxes for each year since the completion of the construction or renovation, to a maximum of the 3 most recent years.