Calgary has one of the highest ratios of non-residential to residential property tax in Canada, across comparable jurisdictions. This means that businesses in Calgary pay a significantly higher portion of municipal tax compared to residential properties in the city, even though residential properties far outnumber non-residential properties. Add to this the Business Tax Consolidation, a seven-year process undertaken by the municipal government, and we see a layering of costs on Calgary businesses.

Calgary experienced a spike in the vacancy rate in our downtown core due to the economic downturn. Today Calgary’s downtown core is nearly one quarter empty. This high rate of vacancy has, in turn, seen assessment values for the downtown area depreciate. The decrease in assessment values created a shift of the tax burden from the high-rises in our downtown to businesses outside of the core who had to make up for the gap in the City’s operating budget. The ultimate result has been significantly higher tax bills, with some properties seeing triple digit increases in their property taxes for successive years for businesses outside of the downtown core.

In addition to a high non-residential to residential tax ratio, layering costs, and economic headwinds, the City of Calgary has only provided band-aid solutions that offer no long-term change. For example, the City of Calgary introduced the Phased Tax Program (PTP) for business in 2016, which was meant to be a one-time fix and used to subsidize a portion of the non-residential property tax. The PTP was subsequently used in 2017, 2018, 2019, and again in 2020. This program was not designed to be used over multiple years. In fact, it costs more to administer every single year it is used, as the actual tax rates accumulate year-over-year.