NDP hoists ‘stay out’ flag with bogus vacation home tax
B.C’s NDP government is proposing to yank the welcome mat out from under outof-province vacation homeowners, among them a large number of Alberta families.
Over and above property taxes, the NDP’s “speculation tax” will extract this year an additional 0.5 per cent of the assessed value of vacation homes in designated districts, including Kelowna and areas on Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands as well as Vancouver and Victoria, increasing to an additional two per cent beginning in 2019.
These families are not “speculators” and just as clearly the tax is not a “speculation tax,” except in the cynical lexicon of the government. It’s a penalty designed to discourage vacation home ownership. For example, two per cent on a home assessed at $600,000 is $12,000 per year.
The message is obvious: Albertans and your vacation dollars (to say nothing of property tax dollars) are no longer welcome. It’s deeply disappointing that any province would hoist a “stay out” flag for its neighbours, especially one as intertwined with B.C. as Alberta.
Trumpian wall-building, childish finger-pointing and the deceitful labelling of legislation have taken hold in the B.C. legislature, to the detriment of longtime interprovincial vacationers who support the communities they have returned to visit year after year. If Finance Minister Carole James won’t be turned, it seems inevitable that these vacationers will seek out greener pastures.
Brian Bullen, Calgary