Guest Post Provided by Adrian Rizzo, Kent-Macpherson
For the past five years I have successfully been assisting golf course owners throughout BC reduce their property tax bill. Over $400,000 has been saved by reductions to individual course assessments and structural changes to current assessment practice that have benefited a number of courses. Even though there have been some great successes, there are still a large number of courses who are paying more property taxes than they should.
I am proposing two initiatives that I believe will result in annual property tax savings for the vast majority of golf courses in BC. Over the past year I have met with Doug Ferne and the NGCOA, BC Chapter Advisory Board, to discuss these proposals and was encouraged to approach BC Chapter members to acquire the needed support to proceed.
The first initiative involves convincing BC Assessment to review and adjust their current methodology for valuing golf courses for property assessment purposes. The current method does not accurately allocate value between the recreational and business property classes that comprise a golf course assessment. The Ontario members of the NGCOA were recently successful in convincing their provincial assessment organization to adjust their methodology resulting in some significant reductions to the annual property tax bill faced by their members.
I have researched and tested the Ontario methodology and spoken to parties involved in the negotiations. I feel that a modified version of the Ontario method would be of great financial benefit to BC golf course owners. I would like to present this valuation model to BC Assessment, but to be successful; support from a significant number of Chapter members is required. My preliminary testing on thirty courses indicates an average annual tax saving of between $3,000 and $4,000 per course, with some much higher.
The second initiative is focused on the disproportionately high property tax rates applied to golf course land by a number of municipalities located throughout BC. There are a dozen or so municipalities that tax golf course land much higher than neighbouring, or adjacent municipalities. The most notable include Kamloops, Cranbrook, Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows, Delta and Whistler. I would like to meet with the identified municipalities to discuss this issue, but again require support from the affected member courses in order to have any chance of success.
For more information on these proposed initiatives, or to sign up and offer support, please see me, contact me at: 250-763-2236, 1-866-763-2236, or arizzo@kent-macpherson.com
Jeff & Tara Ciecko of CK Golf Solutions write two blogs on their website, one is their 19th Hole Blog where they share personal experiences and the Biz Blog where they share business best practices and golf industry related opinions. They have owned CK Golf Solutions for 5 years and provide marketing, social media and business services to the golf and other industries.
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