Property Taxes are designed to be confusing

Property tax collection is designed to confuse you, and that's how the province prefers it.

City Council has just approved a 6.9% increase to municipal taxes, but that will only increase your property tax bill by around 5.2%.

It's really dumb. Let's get into it.

A quarter of your bill

A quarter of your property tax bill each year does not go to the city. It's the education property tax, and the city collects it and immediately remits all the money to the provincial government.

It's supposed to fund education, but it's nowhere near the total cost of education, and the entire amount just gets shoved into provincial general revenue.

The city has no control over this whatsoever. They get told the rate, and then they bill taxpayers on behalf of the province.

Very simple math

So, when you talk about City Council approving a 6.9% increase, we're talking about an increase to the municipal portion of your bill.

It's very simple math. A 6.9% increase to 75% of your bill means that the total property tax payment is actually only going up around 5.2%, as long as the UCP doesn't hike your taxes.

Which they're doing.

Last year, in 2025, City Council approved a 5.7% municipal tax increase. Then, the province hiked education taxes by nearly 9%.

The province has set a target in 2026 of collecting around 33% of the total education budget from property taxes. It's currently funding around 31.6%.

That means that with some rough back-of-the-napkin math, we can expect the province to hike education property taxes by around 4.5% this spring.

For an average $450,000 house in Edmonton, that means that this June, the homeowner will pay around $238 more in municipal taxes, and around $50 more in provincial education taxes.

In the end, their total bill will have gone up around 6.3%.

Average Edmonton assessment: $450k
Municipal taxes, up 6.9%: +$238
Education taxes, up 4.4%: +$50
Total bill: +6.3%

Nearly every municipality agrees

One could argue that the province already has a mechanism for collecting taxes, so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for cities to collect just some of the provincial taxes in this very weird and obtuse way, and nearly all municipalities across the province agree with you.

At the last Alberta Municipalities Conference, a resolution was passed asking the province to take control of collecting their own education property taxes. This would allow cities to just bill for what they provide, providing transparency, and it would allow them to slash property taxes by nearly 25%.

But, in a move that surprised absolutely no one, the UCP has confirmed that they're very happy with this current system, where municipalities shoulder the blame for provincial taxes.