The average owner of a single-family home in Squamish may see a 8.2% increase in their property taxes this year.
Overall, residential homeowners may see a 5.1% increase.
The average strata resident can expect a bump of 0.9%.
On the other hand, the average business property owner can expect a hike of 2%.
These estimates result from the latest property tax rate bylaw, which council unanimously gave three readings on May 3. It is expected to be adopted shortly.
The above figures are averages and are not reflective of the same bill increase everyone will receive. Individually, changes will be influenced by assessed value.
"If your assessed value goes down less than the average, it is likely that your taxes will decrease. If your assessed value…increase is greater than the average, then it's likely that your taxes will increase. And if your [assessed value] is around the average, then it's likely that you won't see a significant change in taxes year-to-year," said senior financial analyst Rolland Russell.
"There's been a fairly significant shift [in] residential assessment, especially both strata and single family in the past year or two, and so many different homeowners are going to see changes in their taxes from year-to-year."
The District has calculated that the average valuation for a single-family home this year is $1.39 million, up from $1.03 million last year.
The average strata valuation this year is $706,000, up from $561,000 last year.
For business properties, those figures are $1.3 million and $1.02 million, respectively.
Russell also said the District collects money on behalf of other entities, so locals can expect their bill to include charges from other authorities, not just the town.
"We'd like to point out that in any given year, the municipality collects taxes, both for our own uses, and also for a number of other jurisdictions," said Rusell. "The largest one is for the municipality itself. The second largest one is for the school district. And then, after that, we also collect taxes for the regional district for our regional hospitals, or the regional district itself."
Residents and business owners can calculate their individual tax bills by using this year's mill rates.
The formula for municipal property taxes is to divide a property's assessed value by $1,000 and multiply it by the mill rate.
For residential properties, this year's mill rate is 2.29, down from 2.86 last year.
For business properties, that number is 5.89, down from 7.35.
These rates do not include the taxes levied for non-municipal purposes, such as the regional district.
A decrease in mill rate may not necessarily result in lower taxes if the property's assessed value has increased substantially.
Altogether, the municipality anticipates collecting $34.1 million in property taxes for municipal purposes.
Next, the bylaw is submitted to the provincial Ministry of Municipal Affairs for approval before coming back to council for adoption.
