Municipal Matters: Tax revenue and tax rates: What’s the difference?

By Lola Barta on April 10, 2025.

First reading of Medicine Hat’s 2025 Tax Rate Bylaw occurred at Monday’s City Council meeting. Property taxes support services like police, fire protection, roads, sidewalks, transit, parks, recreation, social services and more.

When the City budget is approved, it includes a certain amount of revenue collected from property taxes to meet the expenses of providing local services. In 2024, the municipal tax revenue required was $89.6 million. In 2025, the tax revenue required is $94.6 million, an increase of 5.6 per cent. That is the number used when you hear “Council approved a 5.6 per cent tax increase.”

Tax revenue, however, is different than the tax rates you see in the proposed Tax Rate Bylaw. A 5.6 per cent tax increase in overall tax revenue does not automatically mean that your individual property taxes increase by 5.6 per cent. The property’s assessed value is also a factor in determining property tax rate increases or decreases.

Properties are divided into various assessment classes. In 2025, the assessment classes are:

– Single Family Residential (your typical house)

– Multi-Family Residential (apartments or condos)

– Non-Residential (businesses, hotels, etc.)

– Farm Land

Council can choose to distribute the total revenue differently across each class, taking into account the number of properties and assessed value of those properties in each class. To do this, they set tax rates (or mill rates).

In 2024, the Single-Family Residential mill rate was 0.0067838. The proposed Single-Family Residential mill rate for 2025 is 0.0069063. If there was no year over year change to the property’s assessed value, a median single-family house with an assessed value of $334,400 would have paid $2,268.50 in municipal property tax in 2024 but will pay 2,309.47 in 2025 if the recommended Bylaw is passed – an increase of only 1.8 per cent, rather than 5.6 per cent.

Municipal tax is only one portion of the total property tax collected. Property taxes also include the provincial education tax (which is collected by the City of Medicine Hat, on behalf of the Province and submitted to the Government of Alberta), and a levy to support the Cypress View Foundation. This year, the education requisition will jump by 11.7 per cent due to an increase in education tax revenue required by the Province.

Medicine Hat’s taxation software bills around $108 million annually, producing approximately 62,000 Notices (assessment, taxation and supplementary), and over 100,000 pieces of other correspondence such as reminder notices, school support declaration and tax instalment payment plan notifications.

The City of Medicine Hat launched a new tax software on March 10 that includes new features. Tax information is now available on eTax at medicinehat.ca/etax. Property owners can now view their tax and assessment notices online, view payment information and transaction details in one online location, choose paperless billing, and even pay taxes online right in the same platform.

The 2025 Annual Tax Notices will still be printed and mailed on May 21, 2025, but will include an access code that is required to register for an online eTax account. Anyone who wishes to register before receiving their tax notice may contact the City’s Customer Care team for their access code in advance.

Lola Barta is director of finance for the City of Medicine Hat

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