New Home Equity Tax Fightback

Good morning, 

I’m writing you today to encourage everyone to sign the below petition – click the “our petition” link near the bottom under the “what you can do” section to sign. Feel free to share this email.

As I’m sure some of you have seen, the government is proposing a hefty tax on any properties valued at over $1,000,000.  Knowing my clients not everyone with a home valued over a million dollars is living in the lap of luxury. Many have worked hard to save, get promotions and stretch their budget to afford a very modest home and will now be faced with this added financial burden.

I wanted to share this with you so that if you are as frustrated as I am, you can sign and share this info with other homeowners you know. You can click on the 2nd image below to calculate what the extra estimated tax is on your assessed value. Remember, this is on top of your regular taxes and the recent so called “school taxes” that didn’t actually go to schools, that were implemented not long ago. 

Every possible government suggestion I have seen to supposedly curb home prices only serves to actually inflate the prices. Their only solution seems to be TAX TAX TAX or stimulate the housing market with insane new programs that only add fuel to the fire. 

I wish I had a more cheerful email for you, but we need to have our voices heard on this.

Have a great day. 

Prime Minister Trudeau said he wouldn't add another tax on your principal residence as recently as Dec. 19, 2021. So did Trudeau's Finance Minister Bill Morneau. Former CMHC CEO Siddall insisted on Twitter multiple times that he WASN’T funding research into a new housing tax, first reported by an accredited media outlet, Blacklocks.ca.  

LIES?

However, CMHC in fact paid a UBC Professor Paul Kershaw $250,000 to do just that in their “research" released Jan. 5, 2022. Punitive, additional, annual taxes are being proposed on Canadians’ principal residences valued over $1M. This is on top of existing annual property taxes and the "additional school tax" in BC. 

So who’s lying to you? 

Make no mistake. This federal homeowners' tax targets over ninety-one per cent of single-family homes in Vancouver that were valued at over $1M in 2017. The average Toronto home is now $1.1M and climbing, while a Fraser Valley detached home’s average price is $1.6M. 

Greater Vancouver suburb benchmark homes (including condos) are at $1.23M. So, if your detached home, duplex, condo or townhome is valued over $1M, you’re going to pay this punitive, new tax in cities like Victoria, Nanaimo, Whistler, Langley, Richmond, Surrey, Coquitlam, Maple Ridge, and many more. 

The Toronto townhome (pictured) could be on the hook for a nearly $40,000 extra tax bill in ten years, assuming no value increase.

FEDERAL HOME EQUITY THEFT TAX CALCULATOR

To see what you'd pay, download our new federal Home Equity Theft Tax Calculator. You can enter your home value to see how much extra tax you'll be expected to pay per year. If you defer these new taxes, you'd also pay interest. (Our Microsoft Excel calculator can be downloaded and opened with the free version online, or with Numbers (Mac) or Google sheets (free Excel alternative).

This new "equity" tax also steals from YOUR retirement fund, inheritance, future care home costs and more. 

NO HOUSING SUPPLY SOLUTIONS, JUST TAX. 

All the additional taxes, like speculation or vacancy taxes, on housing over the last five years have failed to solve any affordability issues. Instead of applying real solutions like enabling more homes of all kinds for all budgets to be built or incentivizing rent-to-own options, governments:

• add more building regulations (such as "net zero emissions") that make housing more costly
• keep interest rates low so they can print more money and add to our debt, which also fuels more real estate purchasing
• create even more taxes to grow government while they increase immigration to unheard-of levels of 400,000 per year. 

You can't live in a "tax". Meanwhile, the government has no plan to house all these new residents in our cities. 

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

• Share our petition with your friends, family, co-workers and on social media. 
• Please contact your MP & CMHC P. 613-748-2000. E: contactcentre@cmhc.ca. 
• Speak up on social media and through local media.
• Tell the UBC President what you think of their latest research! E: presidents.office@ubc.ca