Saint John property tax bills coming soon, likely with more pain for homeowners and landlords

New Brunswick property owners will be getting 2025 tax bills mailed to them beginning in two weeks but figures are already showing that for Saint John, those bills will bring another wave of uneven tax increases that will wash over owners of houses and apartment buildings while barely splashing many business and government properties.

In Saint John, property tax revenues to the city are up $14.9 million over the last two budget years, including $6.4 million this year.

Most of the increases over the two years, $13.1 million, have been billed to homeowners and landlords. That's 88 per cent of the total tax increase.  

It's also 17.6 per cent more than what those two groups paid the city in 2023.

All remaining properties, including some of New Brunswick's largest industrial, commercial and government facilities, will pay Saint John a combined $1.8 million more in tax this year than they did in 2023. That's a 2.6 per cent increase for them over the two years.

Saint John Mayor Donna Reardon acknowledges homes and apartments in her city will be hit with disproportionately high tax increases for a second year in a row when bills arrive early next month, but says that is only because provincial property tax rules are forcing that outcome on city taxpayers.

"You're handcuffed," said Reardon. "The percentage increase is not across the board. That to me doesn't make sense."

The issue for Saint John is caused by property values that have been growing much faster on housing than on business and government properties, according to annual property assessments conducted by Service New Brunswick.  

However, despite that uneven growth pattern, the city is prevented from directing property tax rate reductions toward housing properties by a provincial rule, which forces it to share any property tax rate cuts it adopts among all property owners equally.

It's that rule that Reardon blames for the one-sided escalation in taxes being experienced by homeowners and landlords and is something she is hoping the province will change by next year.

"We all need to be raised up by the same amount, whatever that is," Reardon said about her belief property tax increases should be shared equally among all groups in a community.

"If it is, on average, 10 per cent on residential, then it should be, on average, 10 per cent across the board."

That is not how the current system has been working.

Over the last two years, Saint John has cut its property tax rate by 4.3 per cent to offset some of the effects of rising property assessments.