4w ago

Carney signs order to prioritize middle-class tax cut, after first meeting with new cabinet

www.ctvnews.ca Middle-class tax cut: Carney signs order to prioritize promise

Prime Minister Mark Carney signed a symbolic order signalling his government will prioritize passing his promised middle-class tax cut, following the first in-person meeting of his cabinet on Parliament Hill Wednesday.

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“I think we’re going to see our government run like a corporation, which I think is long overdue,” said New Brunswick’s Wayne Long, who was sworn in as secretary of state for the Canada Revenue Agency

www.ctvnews.ca /politics/article/carney-signs-order-to-prioritize-middle-class-tax-cut-after-first-meeting-with-new-cabinet/

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www.ctvnews.ca /politics/article/carney-signs-order-to-prioritize-middle-class-tax-cut-after-first-meeting-with-new-cabinet/

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I'll repeat again, I don't need a fucking tax cut. I need the price of housing to start going down.
Increase taxes on property significantly, and use 100% of that money to give everyone a basic income.
This incentivizes both people and developers to be efficient with their housing choices. Using too much housing for the area you live in? You pay extra to help out everyone. Using the right amount? No harm to you. Using less than the average? Here's a payout, thank you.
Prices overall will drop, because it's no longer profitable to simply own a home due to the taxes, and especially not if there's no people in it because the taxes won't be offset by the basic income.
- All they need to do is make it so you can only own one residence, if you own a second as income property it should be taxed to the point that you want to sell it.
  I was in the rental stream before and at least 1 landlord was foreign owners from mainland China--the property had sat empty for six months before us because owner was rich and didn't care about the 2k month they were losing. Another was an unlocatable landlord, the strara paperwork showed China owner, but correspondence was coming from Korean contact info. It started to look more like shell company ownership. Also have two friends who's Vancouver places are Asian owned. Owners moved back to China and main house was vacant for 2+ years, just single basement tennant paying utilities to make place "occupied".
  
  This is a red herring.
  I ran the calculations a while back, that may free up 2-4% of all housing, that is not enough to fix the problem of expensive housing. That's only 1-2 years of new building stock.
  It won't hurt to do it, but it's simply not the main reason real estate is expensive.
  
  We definitely need more housing across canada, but BC has been notorious for vacant homes and airbnb units, thus the ban on airbnb and the added vacancy tax out here.
  
  And it should be obvious that despite new regulations being put in for Foreign buyers, Vacant units, and Airbnb, the prices haven't dropped to even pre-pandemic levels, let alone any useful amount, and they're expected to keep climbing this year.
  These are all small red herrings that are easy PR wins for the government, but don't actually do anything useful to the prices.
  
  They did drop for us in Vancouver. I'm not suggesting it accounts for the high prices everywhere but it definetly had a market affect as airbnb people dumped their additional units. One owner had over 40
  
  Or it just happened to coincide with a massive jump in interest rates which also affected prices elsewhere that didn't implement these policies.
  
  No there are articles about the affect upon announcement and then institution
  
  and yet if you go look at the charts for say Vancouver and Toronto over the same period of time you can clearly see there's little to no effect from BC's policy changes.
  And it's still a couple million dollars to buy a detached home in Vancouver, and the cheapest 2 bedroom condo is a half million (and it's literally on East Hastings) with most normal 2 bedrooms being listed at $600-700k
  These policies haven't made anything affordable, and they aren't going to make things affordable.
  
  Oh they didn't make it affordable, I just meant we saw price drop in market and assessments. Prices here are ridiculous. We paid 415k for 2 bedroom apartment, now it is 575k but before the changes they were selling for 675k sight unseen, just buyers snapping them up
  
  And thus many of those buyers moved to other Canadian cities and did the same thing as Vancouver.
  
  As someone who's trying to move back to Canada, I'm also reading that a lot of the places owned by these investors are basically useless boxes that no local would live in. So even if they got freed up, there'd be very little demand for them.
  
  extremely curious what such a calculation entails?
  
  I looked up the statscan data for home ownership and cross referenced it against other statscan data on rental buildings and locations of secondary homes(cottages and lake homes)
  
  It would also be fun to have squatting laws like some other countries do. Vacant properties can be taken over (e.g. someone does a B&E then just starts living there) and if the "owner" doesn't notice soon enough they start losing their rights to the property. If you get mail at an address, if your stuff is there, if you are the one doing maintenance, all that counts in your favor as a resident. Even if your initial entry was aided by an angle grinder. In some cases actual ownership can end up transferred to the functional residence without any cost. The absentee owner loses their rights.
- I have a much more clear cut policy:
  You can live in one home
  You can't own a home you don't live in
  Occasionally someone has a big place and someone has a small place, but this would solve way more issues.
  
  It really wouldn't.
  A) It prevents renting at all except for basement suites. So no more rental buildings, which make up the majority of rentals available. Renting is an important housing option, as not everyone wants to own, nor should they have to. Move to a city to go to university, and you have to buy a house just to live in for 2-4 years before you have to sell it to move elsewhere for a job? Have a job that requires you go somewhere else for a few months while you
  <build a bridge>
  
  <implement a new computer system>
  
  <train some people>
  , too bad hotel for 6 months instead of being able to rent an apartment.
  B) If you do the math and even take out dedicated rental buildings, there really aren't that many homes that are owned as a second place. It's about 15% of the total market, and a large chunk of that are cottages and lake houses away from the cities where people actually want to live.
  The big place/small place issue is actually more of a problem than the the double ownership you're talking about. There are more total bedrooms in Canada than there are people, and once you account for couples usually sharing a bedroom, there's actually a ton of extra bedrooms across the country. The problem is that they're not distributed properly across the population, 4+ bedroom family homes that were bought to raise children are being kept for decades by empty-nest couples who don't want to downsize.
  
  That's true, rentals are important. So how about instead mom and pop landlords can rent a couple/small number of units, but anything above that you must register as a corporation and the tenants union gets to be on the board, and there are strong incentives to turn you into a housing cooperative. Let's throw in some more tenant protection legislation for good measure.
  Basically, treat housing as a right, not as a financial asset, an investment, or a profit-driven enterprise.
  
  I agree with you on the second part, but even allowing a single home still keeps housing as an investment/profit generator.
  You have to actually do something to force every owner to lose(or at least never make) money. Hence my original suggestion to heavily tax homes and return that to citizens equally.
  
  But zero rentals is a feature, not a bug. Its the point. :)
  Everyone gets a grace period, say 18 months, to sell their excess properties, and after that the state expropriates. Or landlord can opt in to expropriation during the grace period. The reimbursement they will get for the properties decreases during the grace period to incentivize people to do it earlier. Maybe almost nothing by the end. Then the state can run them directly or parcel to some structure to administer and fund for maintenance. Existing tenants get to stay where they are if they want.(
  Presto chango we have massive public housing.
  Idk about making old people move. Its really hard to do. Usually a terrible drama in their lives when forced. Where do you think they should all go?
  I think if you were going to do it by bedroom, each person should get 1 room even in a couple because it isn't just about sleeping. A lot of people will appreciate an office or hobby room or something. It isn't healthy to be stuck in a room with another person all the time. I don't believe in penalizing people for being partnered. Welfare programs do it a lot and it really fucks with peoples lives. They have to chose between being "officially" partnered and getting full benefits as individuals, in which case their romantic relationship constitutes fraud. It also really enforces abusive situations because it enables control in bad situations. Imagine if your job could just cut your pay by 70% because they find out your in a LTR.
  Canada is fucking huge we have enough space for each person to have 1 room.
  
  My suggestion to add significant property taxes essentially does the same thing, since you're "renting" from the government when you pay those. Then it applies properly to everyone, and it's not some half cooked system that people can exploit.
  
  "You think? I mean I'd rather high taxes compared to the status quo. But in my version there is the "let us take it off your hands" option, where it ends up in public ownership. Yours just has the properties swirling around some private market.
  you’re “renting” from the government
  In most jurisdictions, the landlord tenant relationship includes duties on the landlord with regard to services, standards etc. In Ontario they have to keep the unit a minimum temperature, fix the roof if it leaks, provide safe electricity etc. It also offers the landlord the remedy of eviction should the tenant fail to pay rent for a while.
  There is nothing at all like that with paying taxes. The government hardly even enforces the regulations on the landlord. And I've never heard of anybody getting evicted for non-payment of property taxes. So I dunno what you are on about.
  some half cooked system that people can exploit
  I'll admit my idea is half cooked, I'm no policy wonk.
  Rent is inherently exploitative: the landlord is forcing people, usually with less wealth/power, to pay them a fee to avoid being evicted. The fee is greater than the costs incurred = profit. My proposal doesn't completely eliminate that but would substantial reduce that. If provides no new avenue of exploitation that I can see.
  
  People should be allowed to purchase the rights to control land and buildings, it allows them to make more serious changes (construction, renos, landscaping) that they care about. It also allows for long term stability in terms of not getting evicted.
  In my system for renters, the duties of a landlord are still taken care of by landlords, since it would still be perfectly legal to own a property and rent it out. It's the same as now, except instead of the landlord making a profit off the month rent AND the property inflating in value over time, they can only make a reasonable profit off the monthly rent and even then only if they're using the land efficiently. It's not the concept of renting that's broken the market, it's the fact that instead of just being a value added service (taking care of the repairs, utilities, etc.) the current market has made it a long term investment. Force it back to just a value added service (like renting cars) and it will be fine.
  And I’ve never heard of anybody getting evicted for non-payment of property taxes.
  Governments force the sales of properties all the time over unpaid taxes.
  Renting is inherently exploitative:
  No it isn't, that's only the case when the market fails like a situation with a finite amount of land in a specific area. There's nothing inherently exploitative about renting cars to people, or renting a garden tool you only use once a year, or renting a paddle board for a trip to the lake, or renting a hotel room while travelling.
  Once you push the land efficiency aspect via taxes, the land limitation drops off significantly and we can go back to having apartment/home rentals just be something landlords do to earn a little bit of money for providing a service, rather than it doubling their investment every 5 years.
  
  A lot of landlords perform zero or only the most minimal maintenance to their properties. I don't know where this "value added" idea of yours coue come from. Unlike my wage, the rent goes up every year by a fixed percent. They spend as little as possible and over time the neglect builds up. So sad the way things fall apart for want of a little TLC. They will get paid more every year regardless. Then when it's bad enough maybe apply for an AGI and make the tenants bear the cost of repairs aimed at fancying the place up without fixing any underlying issues, and/or renovict them to raise the rent even further. They are value suckers, not value adders. Both from the tenants, but also by allowing the condition of the building to deteriorate much faster than is required.
  No it isn’t, that’s only the case when the market fails like a situation with a finite amount of land in a specific area. There’s nothing inherently exploitative about renting cars to people, or renting a garden tool you only use once a year, or renting a paddle board for a trip to the lake, or renting a hotel room while travelling.
  Sorry I meant rental housing because that's what we are talking about. How does your argument about property taxes apply to a paddle board?
  Interesting how your examples emphasize transience and have the feeling of recreational. Housing isn't something you need once in a while for funsies. You need it every day of your life, ideally without interruption. It's hard to think of a comparable example to residential rental, because it's such a key component to life itself. A better example for you would be access to running water or power. Maybe pharmaceuticals to treat chronic disease. You pay a fee to get access to a resource which is beyond your means to obtain as an individual. They shouldn't be managed according to the whims of random rich people, they are social infrastructure.
  go back to having apartment/home rentals just be something landlords do to earn a little bit of money for providing a service
  When was that?
  Am I understanding you properly that you think housing should be exclusively or primary provided by people who are doing it as a side hustle? Do you think having small artisanal landlords is somehow better than organizations run by professionals? I find it odd that you've clearly put a lot of thought into one aspect of the issue about taxes and such, but still sound kind of dismissive about the importance of housing to people, and also the skill involved in properly managing housing, to say nothing of the human beings residing inside. Which is not in high supply among the rinky dink small time landlords I've mostly lived under during my life.
  But I don't think big business is the solution; there has to be some sort of accountable body that manages housing. I still don't see how your various tax schemes do anything to defer the profit motive, which is the driver of rent increases. It has always been that way.
  
  At the end of the day, rent prices are driven by house prices. If rents become too high compared to owning, people just buy.
  The current barrier is the upfront cost, but...
  The property taxes I propose will drop the current value of homes through the floor. Some highly inefficient homes may actually have a zero or negative value, because they would cost too much in tax each month for anyone to want to buy. They would be scooped up by developers who can make them affordable by building enough units on that property in order to bring the tax per unit down to something people would pay.
  Given that the house prices would drop so significantly, so would rent prices across the board.
  There isn't actually a lack of land anywhere in Canada, even our most populated city cores haven't hit the densities that would prevent further growth.
  There also isn't actually a lack of housing, as I said elsewhere there are more bedrooms in Canada than there are people. We just need policies which incentive people to use them efficiently.
  And the government controlling all rentals is an option, but do you really think they're going to keep everything 100% repaired and up to date for everyone? This is going to be a pain point under both options, and I'd rather be able to take private landlord to court to get something fixed than try to take the government itself to court.
- There's an idea I hadn't thought of before. I wonder if there's any studies out there about how much space a single person needs to be comfortable. And how that'd change base on how many others are in the same space. Could be interesting idea to tax people based on their space to people ratio 🤔
  
  There are studies on that, but they're not super relevant because the appropriate amount of space is determined by how many people want to live somewhere, not based on the specific size.
  People are willing to live in smaller places the closer they are to amenities. It's a gradient, not a single value even for each location.
  
  For sure, definitely an interesting way to think of property taxes and how to encourage people to not have frivolous space.
  
  Average square footage of homes:
  1920: 1,048 square feet
  1930: 1,129
  1940: 1,177
  1950: 983
  1960: 1,289
  1970: 1,500
  1980: 1,740
  1990: 2,080
  2000: 2,266
  2010: 2,392
  2014: 2,657
  https://www.newser.com/story/225645/average-size-of-us-homes-decade-by-decade.html
  
  Man, WWII sure happened.
  
  Yup. All that post-war housing built for returning military had an effect on house sizes.
  
  I wonder if there’s any studies out there about how much space a single person needs to be comfortable.
  Culturally dependent, I'm pretty sure. Housing in Japan can be pretty tiny. Canada's on the large side.
  It also depends on the person and their habits: introverts and people who spend more time at home are likely to want more personal space.
  
  For sure, a thorough study of what Canadians need would be helpful to something like this. Could inform what a good space to person ratio could be. Especially in Canada.
  
  Personality and lifestyle dependent, too.
  The problem I have with the space tax idea, which I think OP has mentioned before, is just that it presupposes what people need without much justification, and then applies a penalty to force that outcome. Really, you only want to make people pay for what they take, and people buying big houses definitely do that. (Having inequality in the first place is of course it's own issue)
  
  you only want to make people pay for what they take, and people buying big houses definitely do that.
  No they don't because they don't pay the whole value of taxes to get services in such an inefficient manner.
  There is no home you can buy that is small enough to NOT be inaccessible to most people.
  
  Are you thinking of sewer lines, garbage pickup, roads and the like?
  I think it's quite possible that if they weren't free, lifestyles would change to accommodate it, including a lot more people going car-free and transit growing to accommodate that. OP's talking about something different, though, and I'm guessing the effect on house sizes just from non-free services would be mild, if measurable.
  
  Also what is available in a common/public way.
  Some people have to spend a lot on housing just to have a place to have sex without bothering others. Or use a table saw. Or play the trombone. Sew a quilt. Cook a big meal.
  If we have accessible, shared locations to do these things, the actual living space doesn't have to be as big.
  The newer, fancier condos have all sorts of sports like gyms, swimming, squash etc. And they have function rooms to throw parties. And hanging out space. If that could be generalized to all people it would contribute to reducing the "how much space does each person need" value.
  
  If I'm understanding this correctly, you wouldn't need to adjust any taxes based on occupancy. The property tax would be fixed based on the value, as it is now but higher. If a single person lived in a big house the new guaranteed income might be less than the tax increase, if you added a second person you'd double the income and potentially cancel out the increase. If you had a family of four in that same house, you'd potentially pay no taxes at all or even get some back.
  
  Maybe not no taxes, but less? Could be an interesting way to tackle low occupancy rates. If it's possible to pay no taxes at all, it might cause people to sardine can a house to save on $.
  
  I see where you're coming from, but I can't really see how that outcome would be any more or less common than it would be currently. I suppose I should've said effectively no tax, as it would simply be the new combined income being higher than the total property tax.
  Some quick hypothetical math:
  For illustrative purposes we can pretend every house is worth the same amount so we can deal simply with averages. At the same time we'll round the average household to 2.5 people. Let's say every house currently pays $5000/yr in property tax and that gets doubled, then we distribute the total evenly between every person in the country. We should end up with every individual person getting $2000/yr. If your household is 2 people, you'd effectively pay $6000, if your household is 5, you'd pay $0.
  In the real world values obviously differ, but it would theoretically lower taxes on full houses and raise taxes on underutilized houses, with the impacts felt much less on small single occupancy houses and much more on huge mansions occupied by a small family.
  I'm no expert, I'm simply a normal guy taking someone else's commented idea and running with it, so I'm sure there would be issues. In fact I see one already. This sort of sounds like how the carbon tax was supposed to work, where the average consumer breaks even, but in reality people in more rural areas felt like they were being punished because they didn't have realistic options to cut down on their fuel usage. This housing idea would have a similar issue where people in the least affordable cities would feel punished, because their shoebox sized studio might cost as much as a house fit for a multi generational family in a different province.
  
  The trick to make this work is to tax the land value, rather than the property as a whole.
  Rural area, land not worth a lot, fairly low tax. My rural property that I live in is about 20% land value, and 80% house value. Downtown core, land worth a lot, but then it gets divided by all the apartments in that building bringing it to a very low number. So you have a 40 million dollar plot of land, but there's 100 condos on it, which makes the land value about the same as above in terms of a percentage vs building value.
  It's underutilized land that gets absolutely slammed. That empty nest couple who kept the 5 bedroom family home that's now inside the city boundaries and refuse to sell to let it be developed into condos. The 2-3 floor condo that was built 60 years ago right downtown, but really needs to be 10-15 floors at this point. Or the 1 story business in the core, sitting on a primary bus route or next to a bus exchange, that needs to be a condo building with commercial space on the bottom.
- Yes but what about the profits of investors? Have you thought of them? You meany.
- He's also planning to start a big government-driven building program at some point.
  I don't expect this guy is going to do a basic income. That's a radical policy that's not really on-brand for him, and we have some crises going on that need the political oxygen.
- Carneys housing minister said he doesn't want prices to fall.
  Congrats, you voted Liberal. The party of debt and future austerity, and importing people to hide falling GDP and to prop up home values.
  
  I didn't vote liberal.
  I voted NDP, but even they didn't have a plan to actually drop housing prices.
  
  What was the conservative plan again?
  
  Tying immigration to housing completions. Forcing rezoning around mass transit. Withholding federal money from areas that dont build enough housing, due to bureaucracy and high developer taxes. Removing GST was his idea as well.
  https://www.conservative.ca/poilievre-will-build-2-3-million-homes-in-five-years/
  Instead we got a guy who says he doesnt want prices to fall.
  
  No party wants prices to fall because the economy is so built around ever-increasing prices that if prices do fall then the economy falls with it.
  
  Whataboutism eh.
  "Maybe the cons would have been equally bad!"
  
  that's not whataboutism it's a better description of the situation than you could manage
  
  It's not whataboutism to point out that the Canadian economy is way too reliant on house prices continually going up. It's a huge chunk of GDP and would instantly mean a technical recession if prices went down (even when ignoring the domino effect the panic would cause, deepening the downturn).
  The country is trapped and no one wants to risk their political career by springing that trap, even if it's healthier in the long run.
  
  Sure though the Cons said they would do it, and they would grow GDP via pipelines and deregulation. Pierre explicitly ran on lower home values.

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