Greens would double foreign buyers tax
Housing platform would ensure ‘everyone … has a roof over their heads,’ Weaver says
Green party Leader Andrew Weaver unveiled an affordable housing platform Tuesday designed to cool the residential real-estate market, increase the supply of affordable accommodation and give the middle class a chance at home ownership.
Launching into the official start of the provincial election campaign, Weaver told a news conference in Vancouver that the measures would help ensure that “everyone, regardless of their background or income, has a roof over their heads and a place to call home.”
He said the Greens’ vision is in stark contrast to that of the Liberals, who have “allowed our homes to be turned into a speculative real estate market for the very wealthy,” while “ordinary British Columbians are shackled with unmanageable debt.”
Weaver would double the foreign buyers tax on real estate from the current 15 per to 30 per cent provincewide. He asserted that the proposed tax is “not biased against any country — it ensures that people who live in British Columbia and work in British Columbia are able to afford to live here.”
“I don’t accept it’s targeted at anyone other than speculative real-estate investors,” he said.
The Liberals introduced the foreign buyers tax in August 2016 in Metro Vancouver, and last month unveiled changes that exempted skilled workers immigrating under the provincial nominee program and offered rebates to foreign buyers who put down roots as permanent residents.
The Green party platform also supports a sliding property transfer tax from zero per cent on the first $200,000 of a property’s value to 12 per cent on a property over $3 million. Currently, the transfer tax is one per cent on the first $200,000, increasing to a high of three per cent at $2 million.
The Greens would also tax lifetime capital gains in excess of $750,000 on principal residences.
The party would also transition the homeowner grant to a system of income-based grants in 2019. In January, the government announced it was increasing the homeowner grant threshold from $1.2 million to $1.6 million.
The party also supports a progressive property tax system that imposes a surtax on property value and allows homeowners to credit rental income and their previous year’s B.C. income tax against the surtax.
Tom Davidoff, associate professor in the Sauder School of Business at the University of B.C., said in response that he likes the Green idea of a progressive property tax, saying it would help working families and encourage the “political process to split luxury single-family homes into multiple homes.”
Initiatives such as higher property taxes with deductions for landlord income, he added, may achieve the same as a foreign buyers tax “without a somewhat distasteful appeal to nationality.”
Jordan Bateman, B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, had a different take. He said he feared that the “net effect of all these new taxes will be to push up the cost of entry-level homes.”
He added: “There simply isn’t enough in this plan to push cities to cut red tape for new housing, meaning more demand on the same meagre supply.”