Bonnyville changes tax penalties, twelve per cent fee cut down

Those who pay their property taxes late in Bonnyville will now be hit with a much lesser penalty.

Bonnyville town council passed a new tax policy that hits late taxpayers with a two per cent incremental penalty instead of a 12 per cent fee.

The two per cent penalty increases by two per cent every month after the initial deadline of July 1st passes.

“We started looking at other ways towns are charging penalties on their unpaid taxes and we decided to change it. It did go through the third reading so it will change,” said Deputy Mayor Elisa Brosseau on The Morning After.

“That is just an incentive for people to pay their taxes. Also, I found there were quite a few examples of just in the past summer where people just missed the deadline by a day, or by certain circumstances out of their control they missed the cutoff and they were getting the 12 per cent. Now it’s the two per cent.”

The policy was modeled after looking at a variety of municipalities enforces tax penalties, including Cold Lake, which uses the two per cent increase model for their residents.

In 2019, there were 299 accounts with current unpadi taxes totalling $380,000, 69 accounts in tax arrears totalling $400,000 and over 50 accounts of unpaid taxes for two or more years totalling over a million dollars.

The new tax penalty goes into effect Jan. 1, 2020.