In August 2024 an survey was available for the public to provide their feedback on whether the City should implement 2-year, 4-year or no phase-in for the next provincially legislated property reassessment cycle in 2025.

The survey is now closed and thanks for all who participated!

Comments and questions can also be provided by email, telephone, or mail using the contact information below:

To determine a property’s market value, City assessors carefully evaluate the following information:

1. Historical real estate sales that occurred within Saskatoon.
2. The characteristics of a property, including the location, living area, lot size, age and any physical improvements that have been made.

With this information, City assessors estimate what a property is worth (i.e., a property’s market value) at the time of the base date. With the next legislated reassessment year set for 2025, sales prior to the base date of January 1^st, 2023, will be used to determine your property’s updated market value.

Properties are assessed to determine the property’s market value and updated to capture changes in the real estate market. Provincial legislation in Saskatchewan requires a reassessment of all properties every four years so that property values reflect a more current value. This allows for properties to be more accurately and consistently assessed, and for property owners of similar properties to pay a fair and similar share of property tax.

The next legislated reassessment year for all property types is 2025.

The amount of property tax a property owner is required to pay is determined by your property’s assessed market value, the City’s budgeting process and the City’s taxation policy. These three processes work together:

1. Council determines the total amount of money the City needs via the budget process to provide the key civic services for Saskatoon residents at Council's set service levels.
2. A property's assessed value determines its portion of the total required property tax.
3. Tax Policy is the City’s tool to control how big each tax classes portion is and how much shifting occurs within each tax class.

After considering all three of these processes, your property's 2025 reassessed value will be used as the starting point to calculate your property tax for the next fours years, from 2025 to 2028. Note that your property’s 2025 assessed value will remain in place until the next legislated reassessment year, which will be 2029.

For more information about how each of the three processes contributes to determining the amount of property tax a property owner is required to pay, please refer to the table below:

Revenue Neutral

Reassessment and the use of phase-in must result in what the City calls revenue neutral. This means the impact of reassessment does not increase or decrease the funding the City receives from property tax.

Changes in assessment are offset by changes in the tax rates. For example, if the total assessment increased for the Residential property class, then the Residential property tax rate must be lowered to ensure the same amount of property tax is collected. This process ensures that the same amount of tax dollars is collected by the City to help provide the civic services Saskatoon residents rely on every day. 

Phase-In

Phase-in policies are revenue neutral and the City evaluates the need for phase-in at every reassessment cycle. Using phase-in can help to distribute property owners’ tax load by smoothing out large shifts in property values which occurred due to reassessment. Changes to property tax, as a result of their reassessed values, can be phased-in over the 4-years before the next reassessment date (i.e., 2-year, or 4-year phase-in options). Note that physical changes to a property that occur after reassessment or property tax increases cannot be phased in.  

Therefore, if a phase-in is used:

• You will not see the end results of reassessment until your property tax phase-in (2-year or 4-year) is completed. 
• a property with an increase in property tax would have the increased tax phased in over time.
• a property with a decrease in in property tax would pay more in the meantime to fund the phase-in impact for properties that saw increases to their property tax.
• the City will still collect the same amount of property tax revenue that was determined to be needed at budget time.

To learn more, please see our resources on How Phase-in Options Work Visually and/or By the Numbers, as well as How the City Has Used Phase-in Options over the last three legislated assessment cycles. 

Since the phase-in of property tax would occur for all property owners across Saskatoon, so too would the impacts. Therefore, when considering the options ask yourself if your property tax goes down as a result of your property’s new 2025 reassessment value, would you be willing to delay your decrease in the amount of tax owed to help another property owner delay their increase?

We understand there is a lot to consider in this process, so we have summarized some of the Pros and Cons of using phase-in options within the table below. To learn more about the phase-in options, please see our resources on How Phase-in Options Work Visually and/or By the Numbers, as well as How the City Has Used Phase-in Options over the last three legislated assessment cycles.