Take responsibility for poor tax rebate rollout

Opinion

“We know that some municipalities were more effective at communicating with residents than others, and in some instances, we are seeing individuals who did not register their residence as their principal residence.”

— Manitoba Finance Minister Adrien Sala in May 2025

The Wab Kinew government seems unable to publicly admit that it made a mistake in its rollout of the Homeowners Affordability Tax Credit.

If you read yesterday’s Brandon Sun, you may have noticed that the deadline to register for the Homeowners Affordability Tax Credit for 2025 has been extended to Nov. 15.

The City of Brandon made that announcement — not the province — yesterday afternoon through an emailed press release to media and a post to the city’s website at Brandon.ca. The City of Steinbach made a similar announcement on June 2.

Just to recount, the NDP government replaced the former Education Property Tax Credit program with the HATC program, providing a tax credit for homeowners up to a maximum of $1,500. This tax credit applies to principal residences only, not rental properties, secondary residences and cottages or commercial properties.

So in order for the rebate to be applied on your property tax bill, a homeowner or condo owner would have to confirm that the property in question is their principal residence and be assessed as a single residential dwelling.

Said homeowner would not be able to receive the credit on any other home in the province.

When the province announced these changes in the 2025 budget, it also eliminated the School Tax Rebate, which provided a 50 per cent rebate on school taxes for residential and farm properties and a 10 per cent rebate on school taxes for other properties, according to the province’s website. Only farm properties will continue to receive the 50 per cent rebate.

These changes were to take effect as of the beginning of 2025.

The province had asserted that most eligible Manitoba homeowners would automatically have their principal residence declaration carried forward from last year, thus negating the need to file a new declaration for the HATC. But some homeowners did not receive this tax credit because their properties had not been registered as primary residences in their given municipality.

As columnist Deveryn Ross wrote in a recent op-ed, most Manitobans were never told about that requirement — or if they did somehow learn of it, the deadline for ensuring it would reduce this year’s property tax bill had already expired.

“There was no media campaign that told homeowners about the registration requirement and deadline, and many only found out about the requirement in the past few days,” Ross wrote in his column in the Winnipeg Free Press last month. “Others still don’t know.”

His assertion is underscored by the fact that the province has yet to make the announcement itself, and has gone about quietly informing certain municipalities about the change. For example, the City of Winnipeg was the first to learn of the Nov. 15 extension, with a specific announcement made for Manitoba’s largest community on May. 21.

As the CBC reported on May. 22, the province quietly sent a memo to the City of Winnipeg, much like it did to Brandon and Steinbach this week, announcing the change. At the time, it appeared to be only for Winnipeg. However, as the Sun confirmed on Tuesday, this is a provincewide deadline change.

So why the radio silence from the province? Where’s the media campaign to make Manitobans aware of the change? While a lack of communications on this issue may be politically expedient, the lack of transparency and accountability will do this government no favours.

In fact, as evidenced by Minister Sala’s statement at the top of the page that he made last month, the province seems more interested in laying the blame at the feet of municipalities. Yet to date there has not been any press release issued by the province about the new deadline.

Instead, the province has quietly added “new” information to its Homeowners Affordability Tax Credit page at gov.mb.ca/finance/tao/hatc.html noting the extension.

So either the Kinew government is reluctant to fully take ownership of a poor rollout for the HATC, or they’d rather keep more Manitobans in the dark about the whole program and not draw more attention to it than they have to.

As noted in April by The Canadian Press, the NDP government said last year that the change — along with eliminated rebates for commercial properties — would net the province an extra $148 million per year.

The province also stated that 83 per cent of homeowners in middle- and lower-value properties were expected to be better off under the new system, But that number would likely fall as assessments and mill rates rise because the $1,500 credit covers a smaller percentage of the total property tax bill for many owners.

Either way, the minister should not be blaming municipal governments for the communications failures of his own government.

» Matt Goerzen, editor