The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The Saskatchewan government has seized some control over property taxes in the province, but nothing will change for Creighton and Denare Beach _ yet. Until this year, there were no limits on how much of a discrepancy could exist between a municipality's mill rates for residential, commercial, industrial and agricultural properties. But on Monday the Wall government announced that for 2013, the difference between any two of those rates cannot exceed 15 mills. If a community has a residential mill rate of 2, for instance, none of the other rates can be higher than 17. The new limit does not apply to Saskatchewan cities or northern municipalities, including Creighton and Denare Beach, since they are all well below this restriction. The province expects only four municipalities will be impacted by the limit. But 2013 is merely a starting point. The province will be reviewing the matter over the next year and by 2014 will have a new plan for mill rate discrepancies in place. That review will include all property tax tools and all categories of municipalities, including cities and northern municipalities. Government Relations Minister Jim Reiter said these types of restrictions are about fairness. 'Most commercial and industrial property owners in the province pay higher municipal property taxes than those paid on agricultural and residential properties for delivery of many of the same municipal services,' he said in a news release. 'Setting this interim limit will be a first step toward fairer taxation among all municipal property tax classes going forward and focuses on the most extreme occurrences.'
