ONTARIO: Property Taxes on the rise
Property taxes in Ontario cities have been going up faster than home values, faster than family incomes, and faster than the overall economy. Here's what the numbers actually show — in plain English.
What is a property tax?
A property tax is money your city charges you every year for owning a home, condo, or piece of land. The city uses that money to pay for things like garbage pickup, snow removal, roads, libraries, parks, and part of the police and fire budget.
The bill is calculated with two numbers: the tax rate (a percentage the city sets each year) and the value of your property (called the assessment). In Ontario, the assessment part is a bit weird — the value the province uses is frozen at what your home was worth back in 2016. It has not been updated in ten years. That means the recent housing boom is not in the numbers.
The big picture
Ontario has 444 cities and towns. Property taxes are their biggest single source of money — 44.1% of what they collect every year. Over the last ten years, that money grew a lot:
- In 2015, Ontario cities collected about $19 billion in property taxes.
- In 2025, they collected about $27 billion.
- That is a 42% jump in ten years.
Over the same time, family incomes in Ontario only went up about 14%. So the tax bill grew about 2.5 times faster than what people were earning.
Chart 1 — Who pays the most? (2025)
This is how much tax each person pays in a city, on average, in 2025. The top of the list is where the tax bill is biggest per person. The bottom of the list is where it is smallest.
Source: BMA Municipal Report 2025 via Fraser Institute. Bars scaled to $2,500 max.
What it says: if you live in Pickering, your city takes about $2,300 per person, on average, in municipal tax. If you live in Milton, it takes about $1,230. Same province, roughly double the bill.
Chart 2 — Where is the wealth? (2025)
This is how valuable the real estate is in each city, on a per-person basis. Cities at the top have very expensive property. Cities at the bottom have cheaper property. A city with a bigger tax base should, in theory, need a lower tax rate to raise the same money — because there's more value to tax.
Source: BMA Municipal Report 2025 via Fraser Institute. Bars scaled to $300,000 max.
What it says: Richmond Hill has more than four times the taxable property value per person compared to Windsor. And yet, as Chart 1 shows, Windsor's tax bill per person is not four times lower. Something else is going on.
Chart 3 — Taxes vs everything else (2015–2025)
This is the most important chart. It compares how fast four things grew over ten years, on average, across 35 major Ontario cities.
Source: BMA Municipal Report 2025, Statistics Canada, via Fraser Institute analysis. Bars scaled to +40% max.
What it says: the tax bill per person is growing faster than everything else. Faster than the population. Faster than the value of the properties being taxed. And much faster than what families are earning.
In simple words: the pie is getting bigger, but the slice each person pays is getting bigger even faster.
Why is this happening?
The Fraser Institute report offers a few possible reasons. In grade-8 terms:
- The province gives cities less money than before, so cities charge you more to make up the difference.
- Things cost more after the pandemic. Fixing a road, running a rec centre, or paying a firefighter all got more expensive.
- The province downloaded programs (health, social services) that cities now pay for.
- Or — and this is the one the report leans toward — cities are simply spending more, on more things, without asking whether the taxpayer can keep up.
The report ends by saying: this may not be a revenue problem. It may be a spending problem.
What it means for you
Disclaimer
This article summarizes and paraphrases in plain English a commentary titled "Property taxes growing quickly in Ontario municipalities" by Livio Di Matteo, Professor of Economics at Lakehead University, published by the Fraser Institute on June 2, 2026. All numbers, percentages, and city-level figures shown are from that report and the BMA Municipal Report 2025 it cites. The wording and analysis in this post are Peter Law's own summary written for a general reader — they are not a direct quote and should not be treated as one. Nothing in this article is legal, tax, or financial advice, and Peter Law is a registered Real Estate Sales Representative (RECO), not a tax professional. Property tax rates, assessment rules, and municipal budgets change every year; always check the current-year information on your municipality's website or with a licensed tax advisor before making a decision based on this content. Sources: Fraser Institute (fraserinstitute.org), BMA Municipal Report 2025.