Property tax burden in Saint John will shift further onto homeowners in 2025
Most houses will see a 7.9 per cent increase in their tax bill
New Brunswick property assessments for 2025 will not be issued for several weeks but Terry Nadeau doesn't need to see the latest Service New Brunswick valuation of his house to know his 2025 property tax bill will jump — by $312.
Added to the $267 the Saint John man's property tax increased earlier this year, and $544 in increases he received over the three years prior to that, the annual escalations are beginning to sting.
"In today's economy, it means a lot to me," said Nadeau in an interview.
"I'm retired, and there's not a money tree outback [where] I can just go and get that extra $300. So, I mean, obviously it has to come from somewhere."
The assessment on Nadeau's property has increased 41 per cent in the last two years, and because New Brunswick requires the taxable portion of large assessment increases to be phased in gradually at 10 per cent per year, he already knows the taxable value of his home will be 10 per cent higher in 2025.
Saint John has announced plans to cut its property tax rate by 1.9 per cent in 2025. Once that modest reduction combines with his much larger assessment increase, Nadeau's tax bill is set to rise 7.9 per cent — before his 2025 assessment even arrives.
"This will put me over $4,000 a year," said Nadeau about his tax bill, which four years ago was under $3,000.
"I just can't wrap my head around it really."
In Saint John, 2025 will be the second year in a row tax bills for different classes of property owners will be heading in different directions — up for most residential properties and sideways or down for most industrial properties.
And like last year, provincial property tax rules have left the city powerless to even-up those differences.
Last month, Premier Susan Holt said a campaign promise Liberals made to overhaul the property tax system, including a rewriting of rules that apply to municipalities, will be kept — but not until the 2026 tax year.
"The timeline is key," Holt told CBC News in late November.
"We're going to get the work done within the first year, so that the bill you get come this time next year will have a new system under it."
In Saint John that means another year of the city's tax burden shifting from business properties to residential properties.
Earlier this year most Saint John homeowners received a 2024 property tax bill from the city that was at least seven per cent higher than in 2023, while bills on multiple industrial properties were falling.
Municipal property taxes on Irving Oil's refinery, for example, fell $25,165 from what they had been in 2023.
Other Irving Oil properties, like its Canaport oil terminal, lubricants plant, head office building, former head-office building, pipeline properties and others, also enjoyed reduced municipal property taxes of between $1,000 and $15,000 each.
N.B. Power did better. The property taxes it pays to Saint John were reduced by $185,194 on its two generating stations in the city.
Moosehead Breweries paid less, as did several J.D. Irving Ltd. properties, including its east-side wallboard plant and paper mill and west-side train yard and tissue mill.
Taxes paid to the city by a number of port properties also declined, including on the controversial American Iron and Metal shredding and recycling property.
The reductions were caused by a provincial rule that forbids municipalities from lowering tax rates on houses below 58.8 per cent of tax rates charged to business properties. For two years that has been forcing Saint John to lower tax rates on its commercial and industrial properties as a condition of lowering them on residential properties.
Individual tax bills for 2025 won't be released until next month, but general tax information shared with the city by the province shows the 1.9 per cent reduction in next year's tax rate, when applied to industrial properties, will accelerate the shift in the city's tax burden to residential properties.
While most homeowners will be paying 7.9 per cent more in property tax because of previous assessment increases, city industrial properties will pay an average of 0.44 per cent more.
That will widen the gap among property groups of who is paying what for city services. In 2023, residential property owners paid $152 in property tax for every $100 paid by non-residential business properties. In 2025 it will be $171.
During budget meetings in November, city finance commissioner Kevin Fudge told councillors if the province had allowed the city to lower the tax rate more on residential properties than on business properties, to even up increases each group would see in its tax bill, it would have been done.
"We believe it would have been a fair thing to do this year," said Fudge.
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