The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) is calling on the city to scrap the Vacant Home Tax in the wake of a disastrous rollout which saw tens of thousands of homes receive bills, even though the homes are lived in.
“Toronto’s vacant home tax has been a complete fiasco,” CTF Ontario Director Jay Goldberg said in a news release. “Taxpayers in every corner of the city have wrongly received massive tax bills and it’s time to recognize that a vacant home tax is not the answer to Toronto’s housing affordability problems.”
While just around 11,000 property owners had to pay the tax last year, the city sent out 167,346 notices to property owners this year telling them that they had to pay up.
The program started last year. Many of the people who received the bills this year said they didn’t realize they had to fill out a declaration every single year.
Approximately 108,000 of those charges have already been reversed.
Mayor Olivia Chow said Wednesday that the person who designed the program is no longer with the city.
Chow acknowledged that the program was a “complete mess“ but said that she wants to work to fix it rather than scrap it altogether.
She said the program is meant to help ensure that homes are not simply being bought up as investments by speculators and left idle while there is a housing crisis in the city.
Councillors Vincent Crisanti and Stephen Holyday have called for it to be repealed, a call that CTF applauded.
“Toronto’s politicians should focus on promoting policies that encourage more homes to be built, not imposing a punitive tax on homeowners,” Goldberg said. “Chow and the rest of council must join with Crisanti and Holyday and vote to scrap the tax and end this taxpayer nightmare.”
Toronto City Council is debating what to do with the program.
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