council WHOLEAs a great man once said, only two things in life are certain: Death and Taxes.City council discussed the latter of the two yesterday and it looks like taxes won’t be the death of residential owners here in Timmins.

New ratios were announced that even the playing field for residential property owners.
We’ll now be paying 1.86 per cent, a much smaller number compared to the other sectors in the city.
This is Mayor Steve Black breaking those numbers down.

This is all thanks to a new initiative by the government to make sure people aren’t bearing the full burden of municipal property taxes.

City councillor Pat Bamford explains how it essentially redistributes those tax dollars more evenly across the sectors.

A few other minor changes have been made as well; the education tax has dropped making small changes to everyone’s bills. The capping rate for businesses has also been raised from five per cent to ten per cent.
This in reality is quite a small change to numbers for business owners, differences of about 18 dollars, but it essentially will take a lot of confusion out of the bills of multi- property business owners.

This capping method will eventually be phased out altogether.
The city made nearly $49 million in residential property tax