City-provincial 'misalignment' on property tax collection leads monthly Winnipeg bills to jump 50% in January

Most Winnipeg homeowners will see their monthly property tax bills rise about 50 per cent in January due to a misalignment of city and provincial taxation efforts that has elected officials pointing fingers at each other.

In 2025, a flat $1,500 rebate on provincial property taxes will be applied to properties across Manitoba instead of the 50-per-cent rebate that was applied to the same properties in 2024.

While this change will only result in higher annual provincial property taxes for the owners of more valuable homes, virtually all Winnipeg property owners will wind up with larger monthly Tax Instalment Payment Plan charges, beginning in January.

This is because the entirety of the 2024 provincial tax rebate was applied during the last half of this year, leading monthly TIPP payments from July to December to be far lower than they were from January to June.

The application of the new rebate over all 12 months of 2025 will result in those monthly payments bouncing their way back up by roughly 50 per cent. 

Many Winnipeggers learned of the fluctuation on Thursday, when the city issued warning emails to tens of thousands of property owners.

"I think it's ridiculous. You can't tell people with two weeks to go [in 2024] that they have to completely change their budget for the next year ahead. People aren't prepared for that," said Lori Penner, who owns what she describes as a larger-than-average home in southwest Winnipeg.

"They had to have known that this was coming and how can you not prepare people, in simple language, to make them understand what's going on?"

The delay in notification was due in part to the Canada Post mail strike, said Tim Austin, the director of Winnipeg's assessment and taxation department.

"In a normal, non-Canada Post strike year, we would send out the TIPP letters at the start of December to advise people what their Jan. 1 payment would be. This year, it's been more challenging," Austin said Thursday at City Hall.

He said his department has those letters ready to mail out but does not have the means to deliver them. There are approximately 240,000 parcels of land in Winnipeg and 136,000 separate property owners, he said.

There are other factors adding to the confusion over property taxes in Winnipeg next year.

Jan. 1 also marks the start of city-wide property reassessment in Winnipeg that will result in the owners of properties whose city-assessed values increased by more than the city-wide average of 9.5 per cent over the past two years shouldering a greater share of the municipal tax burden.

Austin said the new monthly TIPP payments that begin in January also take a 3.5 per cent municipal property tax increase into account.