Township in Northwest Ontario, with no county above it
Lake of The Woods property tax rate, 2025
0.69%of the assessed value on your MPAC notice, each year
$3,435 a yearon a $500,000 home, or about $286 a month
Lower than 99% of the 414 Ontario municipalities
Each dot is one municipality, placed by its newest filed rate. Further right is higher.
Lake of The Woods 0.69%
Middle 1.40%10 more, up to 6.85%
0.5%1.0%1.5%2.0%2.5%3.0%
Lake of The Woods
Middle 1.40%10 more, to 6.85%
0.5%1.0%1.5%2.0%2.5%3.0%
Lowest fifth
Low
Middle fifth
High
Highest fifth
Lake of The Woods
Lake of The Woods in short
$3,435 a year on a $500,000 home: $2,670 to Lake of The Woods council and $765 to schools.
Down 0.01 points since 2019, or $40 a year less on a $500,000 home.
2025 is the newest year Lake of The Woods has filed. Every municipality on this site is compared at its
newest filed rate: 283 have filed 2025, and the other 131 are at their newest year, mostly 2024.
Who sets the rate
Two bodies set Lake of The Woods's rate: Lake of The Woods council and the Province of Ontario, for schools. Lake of The Woods has no
county above it, so there is no county or region portion: its own rate of 0.53%
already pays for services that a county would run elsewhere. That is also why comparing Lake of The Woods's
municipal rate directly against a township's understates what the township actually pays.
$2,670$765
Portion
Rate
On $500,000
Share
MunicipalLake of The Woods council
0.53%
$2,670
78%
County or regionNone in Lake of The Woods
0.00%
$0
0%
EducationProvince of Ontario
0.15%
$765
22%
Total
0.69%
$3,435
100%
Each rate is rounded to two decimals, so the parts can add up to 0.01 off the total.
How the rate has changed, 2019–2025
Down 0.01 points since 2019. Since 2019 the total rate here has fallen by 0.01 percentage points, from 0.69% to 0.69%. On a $500,000 home that is $40 a year less than in 2019.
20190.69%$3,475
20200.69%$3,435
20210.69%$3,435
20220.69%$3,435
20230.69%$3,435
20240.69%$3,435
2025*0.69%$3,435
Total residential rate, with the tax on a $500,000 home underneath. *2025 is Lake of The Woods's own filing; 104 municipalities have not filed 2025 yet.Each part of the rate, year by year
Over the same years the residential assessment base moved from $109M to
$112M, and the residential levy collected went from $1M
to $1M. A rate rising while the base also grows means the budget grew faster than
property values; a rate falling while the base grows usually means the opposite. Assessment is the figure on the
MPAC notice, still based on 2016 values province-wide.
Year
Municipal
County or region
Education
Total
Change
On $500,000
2019
0.53%
—
0.16%
0.69%
—
$3,475
2020
0.53%
—
0.15%
0.69%
−0.01 pts
$3,435
2021
0.53%
—
0.15%
0.69%
+0.00 pts
$3,435
2022
0.53%
—
0.15%
0.69%
+0.00 pts
$3,435
2023
0.53%
—
0.15%
0.69%
+0.00 pts
$3,435
2024
0.53%
—
0.15%
0.69%
+0.00 pts
$3,435
2025*
0.53%
—
0.15%
0.69%
+0.00 pts
$3,435
Why are Lake of The Woods property taxes so low?
Lake of The Woods's total rate of 0.69% is 0.71 percentage points below the provincial middle (1.40%), which is not the same as a small bill. The taxable value is large next to what the budget must cover — $112.0M of residential value funds $769K in levy here — so a lower percentage raises enough, and the dollar amount on an expensive house can still be high.
Home values
Homes here are assessed at $164,955 per household, 10% less than the middle ($183,474).
Spending
It spends $2,455 per household, 68% less than the middle ($7,558). It spends more on social housing (+$74), and less on running the municipality (−$605) and roads and bridges (−$581).
← Less than the middleMore than the middle →
Social housing+$74
Running the municipality−$605
Roads and bridges−$581
More on why
Provincial money
Social services and social housing are partly paid for by provincial transfers, so they do not map one-to-one onto the tax bill.
Across Ontario
Across the 167 places with no county above them, the tax rate follows home values much more closely than spending: where homes are worth more, rates tend to be lower (rank correlation −0.82 for home values, 0.53 for spending). A pattern, not proof of cause.
What it costs to live in Lake of The Woods
Cost
Lake of The Woods
Ontario middle
Rent, per monthmedian, 2021
—Not published
$980
Home valueowners’ estimate, 2021
$300,000Lower than 70% of 412
$400,000
Property tax on a $500,000 assessment2025
$3,435Lower than 99% of 414
$6,992
Households spending 30% or more on housingshare of income, 2021
—Not published
15.0%
Household incomemedian, before tax, 2020
$75,000Lower than 70% of 405
$84,000
Ontario has no official cost-of-living index for single towns. Statistics Canada’s consumer price index covers only Toronto, Ottawa and Thunder Bay here, and it measures change over time, not the gap between places. These are the costs published for each municipality: what renters paid and owners estimated in the 2021 Census, not today’s asking rents or sale prices.
Places like Lake of The Woods
The 5 places closest to Lake of The Woods on total tax rate, assessment / household, spending per household, population, 5-year growth, people per household, among places with no county above them.
Residential is one of 4 classes Lake of The Woods reported this year. The tax ratio is the multiple
applied to the residential rate: a ratio of 1.7 on multi-residential means an apartment building pays 1.7×
what a house pays on the same assessed value.
Class
Tax ratio
Municipal
County or region
Education
Total
Commercial
1.98
1.06%
—
0.77%
1.83%
Aggregate Extraction Property
0.813706
0.43%
—
0.51%
0.95%
Residential
1
0.53%
—
0.15%
0.69%
Farmland
0.25
0.13%
—
0.04%
0.17%
Sources and method
Tax rates and spending come from the Financial Information Return that Lake of The Woods files with the Province of Ontario; population, rents and home values from Statistics Canada.
Every source, the method and the limits
Tax rates
Ontario Financial Information Return (FIR), 22 GPL — Municipal and School Board Taxation. Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Municipal Act s.294(1). Years 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025; retrieved 2026-10-11.
Download the file
Spending, households
Financial Information Return Schedule 40 (consolidated expenses by function) and Schedule 02 (households and population).
Population
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Table 17-10-0155-01, Population estimates, July 1, by census subdivision. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
Statistics Canada Open Licence.
Rent, home value, income
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Census Profile, 2021 Census of Population. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
Statistics Canada Open Licence. Rent is the median monthly shelter cost of renter households (rent plus any utilities they pay).
The Ontario middle is the median across the municipalities with a published figure.
Method
Dollar figures are the rate times $500,000 of assessed value. Standing compares Lake of The Woods's 2025 total
residential rate with all 414 Ontario municipalities: 410 of the other 413 charge more. The five colours split them into fifths.
Municipality ID
MunID 59045, MAH 87614
Limits
These are the figures Lake of The Woods filed with the province. An individual bill can include area-specific charges and
local improvement levies that a municipality-wide rate does not capture. Reference, not tax advice.