NDP goes after poor wealthy homeowners again

People who own very expensive homes got walloped by the provincial taxman last week and the NDP government figures you won’t have much sympathy for them.

The tax grab is a double whammy: The government jacked up the property-transfer tax and the school tax on homes valued at $3 million or more.

The transfer tax kicks in when the home is sold and must be paid by the buyer. It potentially hurts the seller, too, if it erodes the asking price for the home.

More immediate is the annual school tax: 0.2 per cent on the assessed value of a home between $3 million and $4 million, and 0.4 per cent on value over $4 million.

That triggered an angry response from people who are cash-poor and house-mega-rich, including retired economics professor David Tha, who owns a $6.5-million Point Grey home he bought 31 years ago for $370,000.

“We’re going to be taxed to death,” Tha told Postmedia reporter Rob Shaw in a story that went viral online.

Should you feel sorry for Tha? He said the school tax will cost him an extra $12,000 a year, which he can’t afford on his pension.

But there is hope for these afflicted multimillionaires-on-paper. They can choose to defer paying the taxes, with a modest 0.7 per cent interest rate applied, until the home is sold.

Do the math and it means Tha could defer the taxes for 20 years, then owe $250,000 on a $6-million untaxed capital gain. No wonder the government thinks most people won’t be too upset.

But it was a different story 25 years ago when another NDP government inflicted a similar tax grab on expensive homes.

In 1993, then-finance minister Glen Clark raised the school tax on homes assessed at $500,000 and over. He also scaled back the homeowner’s grant on properties assessed at over $400,000.

The reaction was swift and furious from homeowners who threatened a tax revolt. An angry crowd of 5,000 people rallied in Vancouver and called for Clark’s head.

Guess who led the angry mob back then? It was David Tha, the same Point Grey homeowner, who bought the house six years earlier.

“I ask (Clark) to do what is right and honourable: resign immediately!” Tha told the cheering crowd.

Faced with such a fierce backlash, the government folded like a cheap suitcase. Clark cancelled the school tax and apologized. And Tha returned in triumph to Point Grey, no doubt to a hero’s welcome, only to re-emerge a quarter-century later now that another NDP tax collector is pounding on his door.

Somehow, I don’t think there will be another protest rally attended by thousands of angry citizens.

The price of Metro Vancouver property has soared to ridiculous heights. There’s little sympathy for wealthy homeowners among a younger generation hopelessly frozen out of an unaffordable market.

This time, it appears the tax is here to stay.