Nearly half of business owners haven’t appealed their property assessments, and the deadline to do so was today.
A new survey by the CFIB shows 46 per cent of businesses didn’t appeal their property assessment because they didn’t think it would make a difference.
“I think that’s nothing new” explained CEO of PG Chamber of Commerce Todd Corrigall. “I think any time you have a process similar to this, people feel that the process is pretty iron clad, and they might be investing their time in the wrong area.”
The survey also showed 24 per cent of owners believed their assessment was fair, while 10 per cent didn’t appeal because they didn’t want to risk having their property tax increase.
Six per cent of people found the process complicated something Corrigall agrees with.
“I think what’s important to note is the current process is fairly cumbersome and fairly time consuming, so, I think there needs to be a little bit of innovation that goes into that process and modernizing it.”
Research indicated ten per cent of small business owners who did appeal, almost half saw their property’s assessed value decrease.
While this is a great outcome for those who appealed, it highlights the fact that BC Assessment is failing to provide accurate commercial property assessments close to half of the time.
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