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Opinion: Speculation and vacancy tax cumbersome but welcome

Homeowners across Metro Vancouver will soon be getting notices saying they have to register with the province as resident homeowners or qualify for an exemption or face paying B.C.’s new (and newly named) speculation and vacancy tax.
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Homeowners across Metro Vancouver will soon be getting notices saying they have to register with the province as resident homeowners or qualify for an exemption or face paying B.C.’s new (and newly named) speculation and vacancy tax.

There’s been a lot of teeth gnashing about the “negative option billing” element of this, but on balance it’s necessary and needed.

Admittedly, the speculation tax rollout has been less than ideal. Starting with the fact it isn’t a tax on speculators, but more of a vacancy tax. The thinking being, if you can afford to leave a home vacant in a place where people have trouble affording a roof over their heads, you can probably afford to pay more for the solution.

Critics are right when they say it’s a tax on wealth. But it’s a tax on a particular type of wealth – wealth parked in real estate that has been effectively removed from the pool available for people to live in.

And while the registration process feels cumbersome, it’s hard to see a lot of other options. Asking people to voluntarily sign up to be taxed on their vacant homes would have been less than effective.

As both the homeowners grant and Vancouver’s own city vacancy tax have demonstrated, while people can be dim-witted about many things, when it comes to our own financial self-interest, most of us can manage to figure out which boxes to check.

During the housing crisis, there have been repeated calls for more data on real estate ownership. If spending 20 minutes on a form is one cost of unravelling the housing knot, so be it.

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