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B.C.’s Speculation Tax is a stinging penalty
Letter to the Editor
B.C’s NDP government is proposing to yank the welcome mat out from under out-of-province vacation home owners, among them a large number of unsuspecting Alberta families.
Over-and-above property taxes, the NDP’s ‘speculation tax’ will, beginning in 2018, extract an additional .5% 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.
Clearly, these families are not “speculators” and just as clearly the new tax is not a “speculation tax,” except in the cynical lexicon of the government. It’s a penalty, plain and simple, designed to sharply discourage vacation home ownership. And a very substantial penalty it is. For example, two per cent on a home assessed at $600,000 is $12,000 per year. The message the penalty is sending is obvious: you Albertans and your vacation dollars (to say nothing of your property tax dollars) are no longer welcome.
This stings, to be frank. It’s deeply disappointing that any Canadian province would hoist a “Stay Out” flag at the border with its neighbour, especially with a neighbour as intertwined as Alberta is with B.C.
But Trumpian wall-building, childish finger-pointing and the deceitful labeling of legislative initiatives have taken hold in the B.C. legislature, to the detriment in this case of long-time interprovincial vacationers who support the communities they have returned to visit year after year. If Carole James, B.C’s Finance Minister, won’t be turned, it seems inevitable that these vacationers will seek out greener pastures elsewhere.
Brian Bullen,
Calgary
