There’s still confusion in LaSalle about what property owners are supposed to do when they get incorrect tax bills. The dilemma needs to be sorted out soon because the tax department will be sending out more notices next month.
The confusion stems from the January LaSalle Borough council meeting, when Mayor Manon Barbe told Ruxanda Ioan that he should have simply paid $5 to sort out his account. That’s not what city officials told a reporter in December.
In an email dated December 18, Patricia Lowe from Montreal’s communications department wrote:
The following is an overview of what citizens should do if notified about a basement apartment:
1. If inspectors find there is a bachelor or basement apartment that is occupied by a tenant and has not been reported, the owner-occupant must pay the water and waste tax on that unit. No retroactive tax will be billed.
2. If an apartment exists, but is used exclusively by the owner-occupant, he or she can ask for an exemption by filling out a declaration under oath at the borough office, pay a $5 administrative fee and agree to have an inspector visit the home to check the basement. Once these two conditions are filled, the owner-occupant is exempted from the $140 tax for the basement bachelor apartment. The borough office number is listed in the letter.
3. If the bachelor does not exist, the owner-occupant should simply contact the division de l’imposition which will send an inspector to verify this.”
Mr. Ruxanda does not have a basement apartment and therefore followed the third set of instructions. When an inspector went to his building, he made comments that led Ruxanda to believe that he paid $140 for his own unit twice—once in April; the second time in December. Ruxanda later found the two bills and called again to complain.
City officials told a reporter then that Ruxanda’s tax file is in the process of being corrected, but they did not admit to double billing him for anything.
“Mr. Ruxanda is definitely not being billed twice,” wrote Patricia Lowe, an agent with Montreal’s communications department, in emails dated December 20th and January 11. “He does not need to worry on that account. The Finance department and the LaSalle borough have worked hard to correct the misunderstanding. Mr. Ruxanda is not being billed twice. He will not be billed for the non-existent apartment. The tax account has been corrected.”
Ruxanda’s problems come from being among 2000 people who were identified as possible tax evaders in a basement survey last summer. He and several of the others got their letters in the fall; others will be billed in February as the operation continues.
“Over the summer, inspectors looked at properties that might possibly house a basement apartment,” explained Lowe. “When they found what seemed to be an apartment, whether or not it had a civic address, a finance employee would call the owner for more information. If the information indicated that there was a bathroom and kitchen, or a kitchenette in the unit, only then was a letter sent out to the taxpayer.”
Ruxanda’s letter arrived with two bills in a brown envelope that made the package look like a normal tax invoice. He could either pay $280 ($140 for his own home and another $140 for the basement apartment) or he could visit the borough of LaSalle and pay $5 to sign an affidavit.
According to Salle communications officer Pierre Dupuis “since the Service des Finances started this update operation in July, we have had around 350 owner-occupants come to the LaSalle borough hall service counter to fill in an affidavit, so as to get the exemption because they use the bachelor for their own purposes.”
Ruxanda did not have a basement apartment at all, so he searched for a way to remove the charge from his account permanently. The package contained no contact name, and though it did have an email address and a fax number, it had no phone number. A phone number within the contents was always busy and couldn’t be identified by 311 operators.
After many useless phone calls, Ruxanda complained directly to Mayor Manon Barbe at the borough council meeting on December 3.
“Thank you for the gift of this extra number 1319A, but I don’t have a basement apartment,” said Ioan Ruxanda. “My taxes doubled. Who invented this situation?”
The situation stems from an administrative desire to find people with unofficial apartments, said Mayor Manon Barbe. Officials decided to hire inspectors—some of whom were students—to travel around various neighbourhoods and find them. “We’re only discovering that this happened now as taxpayers like you complain,” she said. “You just need to visit the borough and sign an affidavit confirming that you don’t rent out a basement apartment.”
That message had already been explained to Ruxanda by borough officials, he said, but filling out that form would cost $5.
“I’m not paying $5 or anything else,” said Ruxanda. “I’m not paying anything. This is your problem. You fix it. This extra $5 fee is just theft.”
Ruxanda complained that officials compounded his frustration first by telling him that fixing the error would cost him $5, then by refusing to let him speak to Manon Barbe to tell her about the problem personally.
“I voted for you,” he said. “I’ve lived here for ten years and I always pay my taxes. I’ve lived in Canada for thirty years. Who is this woman who won’t let me speak to you? So I don’t have a mayor; police officers assume that I’m lying. Who’s working for me?”
After the meeting, Ruxanda decided to pay the $140 tax to cover water and garbage services for his own home prior to the December 19 due date.
A few days later, a borough inspector arrived to confirm that his building does not have a third unit. In their conversation, the inspector asked Ruxanda why a bill for water and garbage taxes came in November when they’re usually sent in April.
That led Ruxanda on a search through his documents over the holidays. He found a $140 invoice in April and then another invoice for the same unit in December.
And he doesn’t think he’s alone. “If I got the same $140 bill for water and garbage service in April and then again in November, the same thing probably happened to all those other people too,” he said. “No one’s taking responsibility to make sure citizens are treated fairly.”
Although he was frustrated, the property owner again went to talk to the mayor at the January council meeting. That was when Mayor Manon Barbe chided him for avoiding the $5 fee.
As an aside, in the public exchange, Barbe called the citizen Mr. Ioan and he didn’t correct her. He told a reporter later that although his name correctly appears on documents with Ruxanda first and Ioan second, Ruxanda is his family name and he prefers to be called Mr. Ruxanda. When we asked why he didn’t correct the Mayor, he said he doesn’t care what she calls him.
Since the January meeting, Ruxanda says he’s spoken to two tax officials. The first one found an error in his file and agreed he should be reimbursed, but she also said she’s not in charge of his file.
Ruxanda says that when the agent in charge of his file called, she was so rude he hung up on her. He hopes he’ll still get an updated notice about his account in writing.
