B.C. Premier John Horgan
Maybe Premier John Horgan thinks that if he taxes highly skilled workers hard enough, he can cool Vancouver’s housing market by driving them away
May 3, 2018
A tax revolt is bound to start building up in British Columbia as the provincial government hikes one tax after another. On Tuesday, there were 100 protestors on Vancouver’s West Side demonstrating the government’s new school tax, and local MLA Dave Eby cancelled a planned town hall over “safety” concerns after he learned protests were planned there, too. Perhaps the public is ready to say enough is enough. It should. The B.C. government is showing itself to be relentless in its desire to spend and tax.
The school tax itself won’t actually hit all that hard, but many Vancouverites are just weary from getting hit again and again. Beginning in 2019, a 0.2-per-cent annual tax will apply to properties valued between $3 million and $4 million, rising to 0.4 per cent for property valued in excess of $4 million. Sounds like a tax on the rich, but in Vancouver, after years of escalating prices, it’s easy to be house rich and not income rich. A house worth $4 million (a bit more than double the price of an average detached house in Vancouver) will be subject to an additional $2,000 in tax.
This might be more acceptable if the Horgan government weren’t already picking B.C. pockets with so many new taxes. On top of the school tax, a new speculation tax is to be applied annually to secondary residential properties, with a rate of 0.5 per cent for B.C. residents, one per cent on other Canadian residents from outside B.C. (largely Albertans), and two per cent on foreigners. A non-refundable tax credit from provincial income tax will partially offset the speculation tax up to $2,000, but B.C. homeowners with secondary homes worth more than $400,000 will still be out of pocket. Also, property-transfer taxes on sales worth more than $3 million are being more heavily taxed in Vancouver, and the tax is now being extended to some other parts of B.C. as well.
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