GREENSTONE – The Municipality of Greenstone is making some changes to how residents can pay their property taxes this year, reducing the number of instalments from four to two per billing period.
Darcy Chapman, the municipality's treasurer and director of corporate services said, “every other municipality we’ve reached out to does the standard four tax bills per year. So, with the in-term and final tax billing, instead of having four different payment times, the taxpayer with only have two.”
This means, moving forward, Greenstone taxpayer’s annual due date will be the last business day of February, April, July and September.
Chapman states that since more people have access to online banking, a pre-authorized payment plan makes more sense to reduce the eight bi-annual payments to four installments.
“The eight-payment plan was very popular 20-plus years ago because it helped people spread the payments out over a period of time; however, with the extensive use of pre-authorized payment plans there really is no point in maintaining an eight-payment cycle,” said Chapman.
The municipality suggests that residents already enrolled in a pre-authorized payment plan can cancel choose to cancel their plan or switch to an alternative payment plan.
Chapman said that residents sign up for the pre-authorized payment plan through the municipality at no cost. Once signed up, municipal staff calculates the payment amount.
“We take their annual taxes and divide it up among the 12 months equally so that it’s easy for people to budget,” Chapman said.
If people do not want to set up a pre-authorized payment plan with the municipality, Chapman said they can set up bill payments with their bank online or in person at one of the ward offices.
Chapman said the municipality will be mailing an in-term tax bill at the end of January which will include the pre-authorized debt payment forms.
The municipality will also be holding a draw for one $500 pre-paid Visa card for those who sign up for a pre-authorized debit plan between now and March 31.
“The expectation from our perspective is that if we can get people on the pre-authorized debt plan it saved us postage and envelops and paper and so on. So, for this year at least, we really want to pass the saving on to one lucky taxpayer,” said Chapman.
