City's Finance Department offers up taxation tutorial for residents on mill rates

The mill rate, It's a term that can create a furrowed brow and at times a bit of puzzlement from local residents, perhaps wondering what the abandoned pulp mill on Watson Island has to do with their tax load.

And while somewhere in a line item in the Finance office, the actual pulp mill probably does represent something in the expenses and revenues categories for the City of Prince Rupert (see pages 11 and 12 of the Budget Report from this weeks Council Agenda), in the case of determining how much your tax bill will go up in July, this mill rate term refers to something else completely.

To help better understand all of that financial jargon, the City's financial department has put together a tutorial page and info-graphic on the city website, designed to help residents determine what kind of increase they might be looking at with Council set to consider a proposed 2 per cent increase come this spring.

The three step process requires the home or business owner to have their assessed value from the recently delivered Provincial property tax assessment, with the resident then to find the proposed mill rate for your property class, followed by the use of a formula provided by the Finance Department to calculate the impact of the proposed mill rate.

A mill rate calculation chart from the City of Prince Rupert
(click to expand)

You can click on the image below to view the chart, or go to the city website where the chart can be found as well.

For more items related to the 2016 Budget process see our Budget archive page.

Further background on issues from Prince Rupert City Council can be reviewed from our Council Archive page.