Assessment & Taxation
Assessment
The process of estimating a dollar value on a property for taxation purposes. This value is used to calculate the amount of taxes that will be charged to the owner of the property.
Assessment is determined by the Village of Marwayne's assessor Larry James from the Wainwright Assessment Group. The grand total listed on your notice is your property's total assessed value as of July 2022 when the valuation was determined. The Village of Marwayne administration office is unable to make any changes to your property's assessed value.
Taxation
The process of applying a tax rate to a property's assessed value to determine the taxes payable by the owner of that property.
- Minimum Tax
- A municipality may levy, by Bylaw, a minimum amount of tax on each property. The minimum property tax is not a fixed surcharge - rather, it applies to a property if the calculated tax rate multiplied by the assessed value of the property is lower than the amount set as the minimum tax.
- Special Culture and Recreation Tax
- A municipality may levy, by Bylaw, a special tax to provide or construct a special service that will benefit a defined area within a municipality. Examples of special services include waterworks, sewer, boulevards, drainage ditches, dust treatment, fire protection and/or recreation services. The Village of Marwayne's recreation tax funds the Agriplex Project debenture for the construction of the community hall.
- School Tax
- All property owners in Alberta (with some exceptions, such as non-profit organizations and seniors lodge facilities) are required to pay the provincial education property tax, based on their property's assessed value. This tax revenue is collected by the Village of Marwayne and then transferred to the Alberta Government to be placed into the Alberta School Foundation Fund. This money is then distributed among Alberta's public and separate school boards on an equal per-student basis.
- Local Improvement Tax
- A municipality may levy, by Bylaw, a local improvement tax to fund a project that Council considers to be of greater benefit to an area of the municipality than to the whole of the municipality. The local improvement tax would apply only to those properties benefiting from a particular project, rather than every property owner within the municipality.
- Provincial Policing Tax
- In 2021, the Alberta Government elected to update the legislation and begin collecting a municipality's policing cost share under the Policing Funding Model Regulation. A portion of the costs of frontline policing are now charged back to municipalities based on population, equalized assessment, crime severity, shadow population and detachment locations. Although not a separate line item on your tax notice, the Village of Marwayne has been tasked with collecting $20,561 (roughly $67.19 per household) in 2023 towards policing which is transferred directly to the Alberta Government like the school tax.
- Tax Rate
- The tax rate is the number that is multiplied by each property's assessed value to determine its property taxes. It is usually expressed in four (4) to six (6) decimal places such as 0.008437. Due to the number of decimal places, municipalities often communicate tax rates as mill rates.
- Mill Rate
- The mill rate is achieved by multiplying the tax rate by 1,000. For example, using the number above, a tax rate of 0.008437 would be presented as 8.44 in mill rate terms.
Relationship between Property Taxes and Assessment Values
Although one impacts the other, assessment and taxation are very different and each have a distinct and independent process.
For ease of reference the City of Airdrie created an exemplary informational tutorial on how property assessment and taxation work together in the short video linked below.