D. John Goundrey, in Business In Vancouver, looks into some legal sides (five) of the proposed empty house tax. He starts with describing how this hot potatoe has been juggled elsewhere. As background to the five-potatoe Vancouver journey, he incidentally walks through basic legal ground on rights of ownership and of governments. Never fear, his writing is brief, clear and witty.
Business In Vancouver: In any event, the idea that we somehow have an untrammelled right to use and enjoy our property as we see fit is wishful thinking (or unwished for thinking, depending on your perspective), and I doubt that a court would see a tax on empty homes as much different from all the other taxes or restrictions we have to cope with if we choose to own property.
D. John Goundrey is a partner at the Vancouver law firm of Alexander Holburn Beaudin + Lang LLP whose practice involves property law. John is a keen traveler and cyclist who sees touring the world on two wheels as an opportunity to eat and drink whatever he wants.
Let’s say Dan Quale (not his real name, surely), a retired teacher and home owner decides to go off for the winter to research his ancestors potato farming enterprise. In this instance Dan goes to look for potatoes similar to those his grandpappy grew. Like many hundreds of thousands of, so called, Snow Birds, Dan is away for just about six months in Ireland, where his ancestors are from, then another six months seeking the origin of the illusive purple potato in the mountains of Peru.
After all this Dan comes home but is exhausted and needs a holiday; a long holiday. So he gathers up a few books and notes he’s assembled on the glorious history of the potato and heads for the family trailer, which is parked for the winter in Arizona, where he’s going to write a book.
How hard should we tax Dan? How much squeeze shall we exact on this casual and occasional resident? If his grandkids are able to use the house when they’re in town should they clock-in and then clock-out, for taxation purposes, upon exiting?
How about the Mrs? If she decides to not go along on the odyssey and needs to stay with her mom for a while, who’s now taking care her hubby since his fall, should we nail them? Just how extensive and what are parameters of this coming shakedown?
Perhaps we need a number of neighbourhood monitors that have access to all dwellings and keep notes on all comings and goings and file reports with the authorities. This is not impossible. It’s been done before in other countries.
Well argued.
Vacancy is a personal choice and should NOT be monitored by the state.
WA and TX, for example, have zero state income taxes, but fairly high state consumption taxes and very high property taxes. That is a model BC should evaluate !
Better would be to tax every property far far higher, and rebate BC residents that pay taxes or are seniors a certain portion thereof on income tax filing time.
Tough to trace origin (or legality) of money, or if investor is foreign or not, or if someone owns 1 property and lives in it or 5 and rents some but keeps others empty sometimes. The best way is to charge THEM ALL MORE and then ask for more documentation when you file taxes to get some of it back !
All that just to say home made fries are better.
Really, this is just for show, so that the city and the province can pretend to be taking the issue seriously. Remember, the same city council that asked for this tax funded the study showing that there is no vacancy problem in Vancouver. A study that defined “Occupied” as any dwelling occupied for at least 5 days in any of June, July, August or September…
A serious question: why are rental restrictions or outright rental prohibitions allowed to persist in older condo buildings and why are empty condos in those buildings exempt from the empty homes tax?
https://www.vancouverrealestatepodcast.com/rental-restrictions-and-empty-tax/
It makes little sense indeed, but older buildings do not have to allow rental or only a very small %, say 5%. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/housing-tenancy/strata-housing/operating-a-strata/bylaws-and-rules/rental-restriction-bylaws As such, it is hard to enforce an extra tax if you are actually not allowed to rent it out.
Also exempt are coops for whatever reason.
The whole vacancy tax makes no sense. Better would be to tax every property far far higher, and rebate BC residents that pay taxes or are seniors a certain portion thereof on income tax filing time.
Tough to trace origin (or legality) of money, or if investor is foreign or not, or if someone owns 1 property and lives in it or 5 and rents some but keeps others empty sometimes. The best way is to charge THEM ALL MORE and then ask for more documentation when you file taxes to get some of it back !
WA and TX, for example, have zero state income taxes, but fairly high state consumption taxes and very high property taxes. That is a model BC should evaluate !