Canadian officials have agreed to take a second look at their tax on “underused” homes – like those frequented by cottage owners from the Buffalo area – in response to complaints about the levy from lawmakers on both sides of the border.
The Parliamentary Budget Office agreed to review the 1% tax on properties that are not occupied full time that was imposed this year as part of the government’s attempts to curb housing speculation in hot urban real estate markets. Many Lake Erie cottage owners have expressed their concern that they will have to pay the tax, too, even though it wasn’t supposed to be targeted at them.
Chris Matier, an aide to Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux, agreed in a letter earlier this month to review the tax and its implementation. The study’s goal is to determine whether the tax will raise enough revenue to even pay for the complex process of implementing it.
Tony Baldinelli, a Conservative member of Parliament from Niagara Falls, said he was pleased that the government is taking a second look at the tax.
“While the intent of this new tax is to address Canada’s housing crisis in major cities like Toronto and Vancouver, its impacts are catching many Canadian and foreign property owners by surprise in Canada’s rural and agricultural areas, as well as in Canadian border communities, such as those in South Niagara,” said Baldinelli, who led 34 members of Parliament in asking for the review. “Many of my parliamentary colleagues therefore decided to look into this matter, and we are interested in knowing how the costs of administering this complex and burdensome tax compare to the revenue the government expects to generate from it.”
In their letter to the Parliamentary Budget Office, those Canadian lawmakers complained about the government’s “poor and uncoordinated rollout” of the new tax, which spurred so much confusion that the deadline for paying…
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