Tribunals Ontario

Tribunaux décisionnels Ontario

Assessment Review Board

Commission de révision de l’évaluation foncière

ISSUE DATE: July 28, 2021

FILE NO.: RD 21-005

Assessed Person(s): G.K.

Applicant(s): G.K.

Respondent(s): City of Toronto

Property Location(s): Address withheld

Municipality(ies): City of Toronto

Roll Number(s): Roll number withheld

Appeal Number(s): 3392774

Taxation Year(s): 2019

Legislative Authority: Rule 102(b) of the Assessment Review Board’s Rules of Practice and Procedure

APPEARANCES:

Parties	Counsel*/Representative
G.K.	Self-represented
City of Toronto	Submissions not required

REQUEST FOR: A review of the Board’s Decision WR 166793 issued on December 15, 2020

ADJUDICATOR: Jean-Paul Pilon, Member

DECISION

OVERVIEW

1G.K. (the “Requestor”) requests a review of the Assessment Review Board’s (the “Board”) Decision WR 166793 dated December 15, 2020 (the “Decision”).

Background

2The Requestor filed an application with the City of Toronto (the “Municipality”) for her 2019 property taxes to be reduced, cancelled or refunded because she was unable to pay those taxes due to sickness or extreme poverty pursuant to section 323(1)(e) of the City of Toronto Act, 2006, S.O. 2006, c. 11. The Decision dismissed the application with reasons.

3Despite indicating in her request for review that “there are several things that are incorrect” in the Decision, the Requestor detailed only a single alleged error which, as a result, is all that the Board can consider in this request.

4This alleged error relates to a passage in paragraph 15 of the Decision which said that the Requestor had a line of credit from which she drew funds to pay legal fees in a dispute with her condominium corporation. At issue in this request for review is a determination in that paragraph that “the (Requestor) acknowledged that the legal fees were not necessary, but the dispute with her condominium corporation was affecting her health.”

5In the request for review, the Requestor wrote that she did not make that acknowledgment, and that those legal fees were necessary expenses because otherwise she faced having a lien place against her home.

6Rule 102(b) of the Board’s Rules of Practice and Procedure effective April 1, 2021 (the “Rules”) provides that “a request for review will not be granted unless the Board is satisfied that…the Board made a significant error of law or fact such that the Board would likely have reached a different decision.”

Issue for the Review

7The Board has no means of confirming whether the Requestor made the acknowledgment at issue in this request for review because there is no recording or transcript of the hearing. As a result, the Board takes a slightly different approach in this request for review by considering the second part of Rule 102(b) first. In proceeding this way, the first question to be answered in this request for review is not whether the Board made a significant error of law or fact. Instead, the first question to be determined is whether the decision (as in the Board’s conclusion) would have been different had the Board not made the determination in question. Only if the answer is that the decision would have been different had that determination not been made would the Board need to consider whether that was a serious error of fact. If, on the other hand, the answer is that the decision would not have been different in any event, then the request for review would be dismissed. This is because even if the Decision contained a significant error of fact, it would not have been one “such that the Board would likely have reached a different conclusion” pursuant to Rule 102(b).

Result

8The Board finds that the decision would have been the same even if the Board had not made the determination at issue in this request for review. As a result, it is not necessary to determine whether the Board made a serious error of fact as set out in the first part of Rule 102(b).

ANALYSIS

9This request for review is dismissed for two reasons.

10First, the Board concurred with the representative of the Municipality in the paragraph which followed, “that this (as in the legal fees) is not a basic necessity and should not take precedence over the Applicant’s property tax obligation.” The Decision then went on to cite caselaw to support the Board’s view that applicants are expected to use all resources available to them before they can be successful in these applications.

11The Board concurred with the submission of the Municipality in the Decision independently of the Requestor’s disputed acknowledgment that is the subject of this request for review. The contested acknowledgment by the Requestor did not have any bearing on that determination.

12More significant is the Board’s second reason for dismissing this request for review. This is that the Requestor had sufficient funds available to satisfy the tax obligation, where the acknowledgment in question also would not have made any difference to the outcome.

13There were several determinations in the Decision that were not disputed in the request for review on this point: that the Requestor’s average closing balance in her bank account was $979.82 (paragraph 11 of the Decision), that the Requestor had TFSA funds of $177.53 available in December, 2019 (paragraph 14 of the Decision) and that the Requestor’s line of credit had an available balance of $10,942.00 as of December, 2019 (paragraph 15 of the Decision). Even if this latter balance had been accounted for in these legal fees, which was unclear in the Decision, the other two balances exceeded the property taxes levied on the Subject Property for the 2019 taxation year which paragraph 2 of the Decision stated were $680.86 by $476.49.

14As a result, the Board finds that regardless of whether the Decision was incorrect as to the necessity of those legal fees, there were funds available for the Requestor to meet her 2019 tax obligation. There was no error in the Board’s conclusion that the Requestor was not unable to pay the taxes that were the subject of her application to the Municipality.

CONCLUSION

15Even if the Board made a significant error of fact in its determination that the Requestor said that these legal fees were not necessary, the Board would not likely have reached a different decision but for that significant error. Therefore, the Requestor’s request for review pursuant to Rule 102(b) should be dismissed.

ORDER

16The Board orders that this request for review is dismissed.