The city's finance and audit committee will be debating tax rates over the coming month, but what does the tax rate really mean for property owners?
The tax rate, commonly called the mill rate, is a number used by the city to determine how much property tax to collect on each property based on its assessed value.
One mill is equal to one-thousandth of a dollar, or one tenth of a cent. The term mill rate comes from the Latin millesimum, meaning one-thousandth part.
In practical usage the mill rate set by the city is the amount of tax in dollars collected per $1,000 of assessed property value.
To calculate your property taxes using the rate, take your property's assessed value from the B.C. Assessment Authority, divided it by 1,000, then multiply it by the tax rate.
For example:
In 2010 the total property tax rate for residential properties in Prince George was 12.20074.
For a house worth $100,000, the property taxes would have been $1,220.08.
The assessed value of $100,000, divided by 1,000 equals 100. One hundred times 12.20074 equals $1,220.074, rounded up to $1,220.08.
