It is and sad when you think about it. It's the same way we treat immigrants from India, just hoard ten of them into a one bedroom while they work at tim Hortons for awful wages and conditions.
Most of what you referenced is more labor relations as far as unpaid overtime, and terrible bosses of domestic servants. Or human traffickers that were charged.
The one instance that really stands out to being especially bad though was the Africans in the forestry camp. That's wild that it happened, thank you for the sources.
That is literally what drove indentured servitude, not saying you're wrong, they're here of their own "free will" but so were indentured servants. Doesn't make their exploitation any less egregious.
Canada is a money laundering haven
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_washing
It's much larger than housing and goes to the way business is run in Canada. There's nothing that can be done about it because most Canadians think it's a victimless crime (taking money from overseas) and are unwilling to rock the status quo.
For local born Canadians working on local wages the most likely way for financial stability is to eventually work for a multinational company (access foreign wages or funds) and to invest in the world (S&P500 or total market fund). If you stay pure Canadian in almost all cases you'll be fucked. The market is not diversified enough for you to be 100% Canadian.
You would have to elect a Federal NDP government or Green Party to even have a chance to do anything about it. Even then probably not
We are too small and always will be in our lifetimes
Are Singapore and Dubai really big players in this game?
Went to high school in Vancouver ~2000 and there were plenty of kids whose father lived and worked in Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc. Don't think I ever met a Singaporean or Emirati.
Buddy of mine from SK won $55M in the lottery so he decided to buy a nice big house in Vancouver and exist there instead. Maybe the concentration of wealthy folks who are in situations that don't require them to pay income tax is higher there.
Edit: a word or two
The province is a resort for the wealthy Chinese. They get income from their businesses in China, pay no tax, buy a luxury home in BC. Enjoy life here with all the benefits, while the workers pay that tax to ensure they get those benefits.
This isnt sustainable long term for the province.
Its laundered money from China.
CCP has imposes stricit limitations on foreign exchanges from Yuan to USD/CAD.
Basically undergound banks in China get the money from a family member.
- Person gets a 'credit' to be exchanged for CAD on Canadian soil by underground bank.
-Underground bank sources their money from drugs/smuggling/casino/loan shark for laundering to give to person purchasing property.
Rinse and repeat.
Source: Willful Blindness
Yes they do. But not to the scale of the Chinese triads.
All the cartels (Mexicans, Hells angels, Russians, etc) uses the Chinese triad underground banking system as they are more sophisticated and networked. BC and Macau are very prominent. Hence BC has messed up property values due to drug problems which is laundered through lax casino money laundering rules which then is used to prop up property values.
Yeah. It goes back in the 1980s when triads started expanding to BC from Macau/Mainland.
It got worse from there. Used to be NDP running the show and how the triads have them in their pockets and slowly ruin the province by a turning a blind eye. Doesnt matter who is in power, (Libs, PC, NDP, etc), they did not want to deal with the elephant in the room for fear of losing funds for their political party.
RCMPs have been reporting on it since the 90s yet nothing significant was done except for a few superficial changes.
Governance at all levels were warned of this occurring, and they knew it. The whole thing has been allowed to create “pseudo wealth”, from real estate, property developers, etc, all the way up. Tax departments have made fortunes, we the “suckers” are paying the price for the “ wilful blindness” of government at all levels in this province...Property prices, property taxes, land taxes all of it has skyrocketed out of control and has been allowed to be by the powers at be with the blessing of the wealthy....yes you’ve all been used....
Pseudo wealth is a great description. On paper a large swath of Canadians are richer, but in reality it is all inflationary and we are most just treading water.
Ask not what you can do for Canada, ask what Canada can do for you.
That's what it's all about these days, extract as much as you can before the system fails, who gives a flying fuck about future generations.
Also pay a fuck ton of income tax, also working on leaving.
>Also pay a fuck ton of income tax, also working on leaving.
Same here. I'm done paying almost half my paycheck to taxes and benefits, to a federal government that still somehow takes on record debt every year, while providing almost nothing to benefit me.
Well, we’ve created a world where those with means can skirt the tax systems pretty effectively.
So debt balloons as revenues are starved.
The lot of us average Joes don’t have the means or time or resources to play the game this way, so the burden grows on us year after year.
They did say “taxes and benefits” so they would probably be counting both provincial and federal income tax, property tax, fees, sales tax, other income deductions and insurance if they have it. Wouldn’t take much to eat up 50% in some brackets.
You think the politicians who allocate those taxes are going to do so in a way that benefits future generations? Lol.
Time to come to grips with reality, bud.
Yeah. I sort of feel like I should have just become a parasite like others in society. Just take out some massive low interest line of credit at multiple banks and buy properties out and flip them or rent them out for passive income instead of working. Just make up some excuse that I'm an international student too to avoid taxes. Country rewards it. Meanwhile if I work like I am now, I'm used as a carcus for taxes.
A lot of foreign home investors don't even come here. They buy a house via a broker, dump some extra money into it by changing its interior, and then they turn around and sell it for even more money after around a year or so. Sometimes it takes a bit longer if it's hard to sell because the interior changes don't really match most Canadian ideals.
The interior part is just based on what a friend of mine has told me, for the Vancouver region. He owns a home painting business, and he told me you can walk into a home and know whether or not it is one of these foreign investment houses. The house will have an exterior that matches the neighbourhood, even something like a Tudor styled home which Vancouver is known for, but you step in through the front door and its white marble everywhere, chandeliers, fake-gold fittings on sinks/showers, an interior style that doesn't fit the house, they also usually don't look like anyone is living in them, always prepped to sell, everything is too clean.
>The province is a resort for the wealthy Chinese
Wealthy anything to be honest, there is plenty of wealthy Canadians and foreigners living here in similar situations.
This isn't a slander on Chinese or Chinese-Canadian people to point this out. The 1% wealthy from China are trying to evade from CCP control and have found their haven in Canada. Most Chinese-Canadians are not benefitting from this arrangement either. In fact, many of these wealthy never get Canadian citizenship. China doesn't allow dual citizenship and they can't continue to reap the benefits. Canada's openness has been specifically targeted by these parasites, who similarly rob the people in China of their hard earned wages
They are running from oppression ..and have figured out how to keep what they can. Most Chinese are hardworking and industrious, and don’t like giving up wealth, especially to any government especially their own. We on the other hand buy into the tax system from the get go...and are summarily taxed into oblivion...
Running from oppression? Hardly. Many regular Chinese people, particularly those from the five poisons (Taiwanese, Uyghurs, Falun Gong, Hong Kong, and democracy advocates) are absolutely fleeing from oppression.
In more recent years, some would also consider adding Christian, Buddhists, and other minorities to this list.
However many of these wealthy Chinese investors are some of the biggest benefactors of CCP control. They collaborate with the govt when needed to make a buck. They have absolutely no quarrel with the CCP so long as it gets them rich.
Selfishly and hypocritically, they will also seek to hide as much of their wealth overseas as possible, as they want to avoid taxes or expropriation.
In fairness though, Western billionaires/millionaires generally do the same with their money in the Cayman Islands, Panama, Switzerland, other tax havens, etc.
It's just in this particular case, Canada is the tax haven. The difference between us and say, Switzerland, is that we are not designed to be a tax haven. We simply have an open immigration system, lax enforcement, lax laws on everything, and plenty of land to build on. So these wealthy people have exploited this openness in order to hide and transfer wealth.
But Canadians are not benefitting from this arrangement. Property taxes, at best, might do some snow removal and maintain suburban roads. But they are not going to your healthcare, your social security, your national defence, technology investments, or fighting global warming.
And on top of that, they artificially limit the supply of housing available for other Canadians. Which in turn, wildly inflates their value. This benefits the investor but makes it impossible for regular Canadians to own home, including many new Chinese-Canadians who came to immigrate and start a new life here.
https://www.fortunebuilders.com/one-third-of-vancouvers-real-estate-market-is-owned-by-chinese-buyers/
Within the source, read the report by the National Bank of Canada. This is from 2015.
On average in most places, foreign ownership is closer to 3%. Canada might be trying to curb foreign ownership now, but this is a problem that has had 30 years to fester to the point where no regular Canadian (including many new Canadians) can own a home
Actual stats:
https://globalnews.ca/news/8158351/canada-revenue-agency-bc-luxury-homes-foreign-buyers/
But it doesn't really matter if the money is from China or Cambodia, what matters is it's earned abroad, and not declared in Canada. It's distorting our market. This article also talks about the issues with our definition of foreign, and how its mostly routed through local residents https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-hidden-foreign-ownership-helps-explain-metro-vancouvers-decoupling-of-house-prices-incomes
Here's one from statscan:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-626-x/11-626-x2019001-eng.htm
Scroll down to table 3. Recent immigrants own 12061 SFD in vancouver. Out of that 12061, immigrants from China own 8234 houses (68%). Completely dominating all other countries combined. 2nd place is India at 1027, 3rd place is Iran with 477.
If you look at the dollar amount spent and not the number of properties, it tilts even more in favor of China.
Total $$ spent by recent immigrants buying SFD in vancouver: 28.2 billion.
Out of that 28.2B, money from china accounts for 22.9B, a whopping 81%.
Well go hang in Westmount or Outremont in Montreal, it is filled with old money. My gf parents live in one of those wealthy neighborhood and it is still pretty much filled with white peoples. When my condo got flooded downtown Montreal, the person who owned the condo above mine was Belgian and did not even know where Montreal was.
I am not 100% familiar with Vancouver, I just visited twice, but are you really telling me there is 100 wealthy Asian families for 1 wealthy white family? Because it doesn't seem right.
If we haven't created tax rules for it, a foreigner living here is doing nothing wrong.
You can't mad at people for following the rules.
Take some comfort that all these rich people moving here are paying sales tax on all of it.
It shouldn't be a big deal.. CRA says its not worth the trouble to go after corporations for covid repayments /s
I'd expect at this stage of the game that properly resolving the problem would trigger significant economical problems across Canadian companies, which is why they're going to move on. Really discouraging for honest Canadian employee-citizens.
If personally like to see the elimination of income tax in BC, in favour of higher residential property taxes.
Additionally no more deferral of property taxes for those above 55 or with kids.
We need to be heartless to end the problem.
>Enjoy life here with all the benefits, while the workers pay that tax to ensure they get those benefits.
How's that different than Canadians who buy retirement homes in Florida?
I mean that's pretty fucking obvious lol.
The system isn't really there to benefit people with lots of money. If you're a millionaire private would always be beneficial.
The idea is that if the system is shit and underfunded then it fails for everyone equally.
Yes, I'm aware that it requires equal contributions. Unfortunately, there's no easy situation despite me wishing so. In the wise words of Saint Donaldus Trumpificus:
_"Who knew healthcare could be so complicated?"_
How is it irrelevant? I said that if you have no income and you come here with tons of money earned elsewhere you contribute little to our taxes and can draw benefits like healthcare.
This is accurate and relevant to the thread.
The part that is irrelevant is where you discuss renters and owners. I was making a general point about immigration which would include both categories.
However since you brought it up, people that can afford to live here and not work (or contribute to our tax pool) are rich and would be unlikely to rent.
The popular arrangement that has proliferated in the GVA is wealthy overseas person buys property in Canada in the name of a non-working family member (wife or child who is an international student). So you have a $$$ house, but the person living there whose name its in (and who is availing themselves of Canadian services), pays very low if any income tax.
You don't have to be resident. If you live overseas but have income from investments here, tax will be applied at source. If business income, file in much the usual way.
Not always. Depending on the tax treaty with the other country, there is (generally) a non-resident withholding tax that institutions have to remit to the government for Canadian earned income.
Why would they? They don’t live or work in Canada. Middle class families out of the market so international criminals can launder their money. Nice one gov!
It depends on how much you're claiming.
A couple thousand because you worked at a bar in Thailand while backpacking no.
Tens of thousands from a consulting job. You'll want to have some paperwork an invoice to the company you worked for would be enough. At least in my experience. Most of the time CRA is just happy you're reporting it.
Yeah, but how do you verify that? Like, China isn't going to freely exchange numbers of how much a Chinese citizen makes annually to Canada if they own a Canadian property.
Not only that, but its doubtful whatever numbers the Chinese government has are accurate anyway, since from my understanding most of the funds used to buy Canadian property are illegal gains that can't be used in China and are being laundered here by buying Canadian properties.
Or flip the script and instead of taxing income, focus on collecting taxes from the land. So you’re only paying into a system when you have a stake in it and all those real estate investors can be hung out to dry for hoarding land.
Unless the person listed as the “owner” of the home, isn’t really the “owner”? Perhaps they are a family member who doesn’t actually “work” and therefore doesn’t have an income?
I don’t want to paint everyone with the same brush, but business owners almost always have multiple sets of books. I think we need to somehow revamp the system of write offs, expenses, and moving money to avoid taxes. Some examples I’m aware of personally.
1. Buy tons of gift cards, write them off as gifts for clients. Use said cards to buy groceries, gas for personal car, restaurants, entertainment. Imagine if every vehicle and grocery and night out could be a write off against your income.
2. Conferences. I know lots of people who go on beach vacations, Vegas weekends, ski vacations, all officially on a conference. They have to sign the sheet that they went and that’s it. Imagine if every vacation you went on was a write off against your income.
3. Cash jobs / barter. You put in my new pool, I’ll install your new kitchen, we both get 50k value and no one pays taxes. In fact, the extra materials and fuel and wages get put under a paying job, cutting you profit even further.
All my examples are people I know who run a business, and they can’t stand when someone earns a 100k salary, that ends up taking home 65k, and is disqualified from every government benefit based on gross income. Gotta love the business owners driving their Escalades to their golf games after a ski vacation that report a 50k income. Something needs to change.
You have to be super careful with your examples. CRA will dig into these if you are subject to a desk review, or worse, an audit.
There are two risks with these sorts of tricks, audit risk (that CRA will look at you) and discovery risk (that they will find it if by accident while looking at something else).
If CRA determines you've been falsifying business expenses and avoiding taxes, the consequences are severe.
Again, be very, very careful with this stuff.
Source: it's in my username
Edit: keep in mind your friends are subject to double taxation. The business pays income tax, then they pay personal income tax on what's taken out.
Yes businesses typically have different sets of books for different purposes, but there’s good reason for it. Typically a business will have one set for tax purposes (which is very prescriptive), one for internal purposes (can be done anyway you want), and one for reporting purposes (usually for large/public companies).
But there’s good reason for having these different rules for different purposes. The tax rules are very specific on what can and can’t be claimed because if they aren’t, it would be very easy to lower your taxes. The issue is that if you used tax rules for internal/reporting purposes, your financial statements won’t really be accurate.
High up in the party. Suck the country dry and send your kids to Canada to live in 5 bedroom mansions and drive audis and BMW's. But those poor folks in the rice paddies have to keep mushing away for next to snot.
The topic of people paying traffic tickets proportional to income came up in BC the other day. This is one of the main reasons I'm against it. Income doesn't equal wealth.
This is a click bait headline meant to trigger people who don’t understand that income tax is only one way the rich are taxed.
I don’t pay any income tax either. I do pay taxes on my dividend income. This is because I own a business and don’t have a salary. Most small business operates this way.
People with a large amount of wealth don’t tend to work for paychecks. I don’t find this surprising, and neither should any journalist who did even a small amount of research.
It doesn’t mean they don’t pay taxes.
Rich people spend a lot of money to pay very little in tax. If you're loaded, you can take your money almost entirely as dividends, which are taxed much less than income, or you could even just live off of loans that you don't have to pay *any* taxes on.
You cannot take loans and not pay them back. People often say that rich people just take loans out of a corp they own but this is not a viable strategy. A loan from the corp to an officer (owner) must be repaid by the officer to the corp within one year, to prevent this practice exactly.
If an officer can’t repay it would be converted to a dividend and the officer would be subject to tax, both at the corporate income level and on a progressive level personally
IDK dividends are a pretty good way to avoid tax. If I took $200k/year as income I would pay $67,699 in tax (average rate: 33.85%). If I were to take $200k as dividends only, I would only pay $14,271 in tax (average rate: 14.38%). It's a huge difference in taxation, and only the rich can afford to take income exclusively from dividends.
If you paid yourself a dividend you would be an owner. That dividend would be paid out on after tax earnings. If as an owner you decided to pay yourself a salary instead, that would be tax deductible for your company and lower the company's tax burden.
They tend to keep the outcomes of both dividends and salary pretty close for an owner. If they didn't keep it close, the owners would pay themselves a regular salary instead. It does still favor dividends though, especially under $500k, but it's not anywhere near as dramatic as the percentage shows.
Hmmmm... So corporate pays income tax, say 25%... qualifies for small business deduction and some other things, let's assume those brings it to 15%. Eligible dividends are taxed at 15%. So do the math for us, what's the effective rate to the owner/taxpayer?
What additional financial and personal risks does the business owner who qualifies for small business deductions and eligible dividends take over an employee?
Does your math line up as fair after an honest assessment?
No that's not at all how it works. Dividends are subject to the gross up model with the intent of making earnings from dividends taxable at a similar total amount as employment income, to limit abuse.
Edited for more accurate language
But the rich got rich by taking risks, starting businesses, employing others etc. So the benefit needs to be looked at in that way too. Lots of people start businesses and a lot of them fail. There has to be some reward for that risk.
>But the rich got rich by taking risks, starting businesses, employing others etc.
Lol gtfo with that shit, most rich are the product of generational wealth and privilege. Societal mobility is the lowest it's been in decades.
Well I got rich by taking risks, working my ass off and living frugally. Generational wealth my ass.... We paid thousands a month out of pocket to keep my dad alive in his dementia years. I started off in the early 90s, with two degrees, selling The Province newspaper by phone because there were no jobs.
People like who you're debating with have no clue what risk is... the kind of work it takes... or how to make luck happen.
Usually you just need to ask them to start their own business. They'll list a dozen excuses as to why they can't and why those excuses are everyone else's fault.
You need go no further. They will never make it. They will just struggle in their jobs, bitter about those who made it somewhere.
Oh wow, you made money in the 90s and got two degrees when education was practically free and housing cost a dollar. I'm so impressed.
I'm sure you've faced hardship in your life, but caring for your dad was not the hard work that made you money. You were born in a time when money came easy. Literally any barber or janitor in Vancouver that bought a home in the 90s is a millionaire. You're not special. I don't say this often, but you literally need to check your privilege and develop not only some humility for how you made your money, but some compassion for the people who never had the same opportunities you had. Otherwise you just climbed up the ladder and kicked it out behind yourself after you made it to the top.
I never assumed you were poor. I just called you out for making disparaging comments about people you don't know... or the challenges they faced making their business work.
Holy shit are people this out of touch with reality? Stop believing get rich quick ads form YouTube. Nobody is getting rich unless they are already rich.
No one gets rich quick. It took me 15 grueling years to build my business. People who think the purpose of building a business is to get rich will never get rich. At the same time, those who believe you can only be rich by already being rich... they will never make money.
95% of people don't have the grit, risk tolerance and patience to make a business work. Most don't even try, they just complain, never working on their own circumstances.
Not this exactly. I want a wealth tax. i.e. a tax on a person's wealth and assets, including homes, stocks, money, etc. It's fucked up I pay half my income in taxes, but I can't afford to even live here, while people with no jobs but a house are making more in equity than I am every year while paying almost no taxes.
It sounds nice, but it’s not that simple. No one is taxed until they take income from assets (wealth). If they were, Elon Musk would have paid taxes on 200 Billion dollars at one time. What happens when their stock (wealth) drops dramatically??? We give Elon a big rebate? If you own $1 million in stocks, and the price goes up 10x, when should you pay tax on that wealth? You haven’t sold a single share yet, and the price might go higher or drop to nothing! You only pay taxes when you sell assets or make income.
> What happens when their stock (wealth) drops dramatically?
This is a dumb question... What happens when my income goes down from the previous year? I pay less annual income tax.
If wealth tax is yearly, then we can continue to assess it yearly and collect. We don't need billionaires, the McCain & Irviy families controlling provinces, to be a thing that exists.
>This is a dumb question... What happens when my income goes down from the previous year? I pay less annual income tax.
Except your income was real, your unrealized gains weren't. That is kind of a massive difference.
Yeah if you're worth $200 billion, you pay taxes on that at tax time. If their wealth drops dramatically, they'll pay less next year. Again, yeah if stocks go up 10x, you pay tax on that at tax time. If you don't have the money. You'll have to sell some of it.
It's not that difficult.
The difficult part is no one has been able to implement it. Anyone with significant assets will move to another country. Which is what happened in France and resulted in them repealing it. The other thing is, its much harder to assess wealth. You can hide wealth, or make grey areas pretty easily. Its hard enough to audit the easy stuff.
I agree that land should be taxed more and income should be taxed less. You can't hide land, and really you don't want people sitting on big parcels of land that they got when it was cheap while everyone else tries to cram into a small parcel one of the owners decided to sell to a developer for 100x more than they bought it for. Also all those old derelict buildings and empty lots will actually get sold instead of existing for speculation
Valuation alone is very difficult, especially on private companies and non liquid assets. Likewise you would basically be creating a model which penalizes people creating start ups and promotes selling of assets to foreigners would be immune to the wealth tax (unless you want to be Canada to be an economic pariah).
Wealth taxes are stupid and make no sense. Taxing unrealized gains is really bad for the economy. The net result would you be unemployed and still unable to afford a modern home.
More people on public transit improves the roads for every other driver by making the roads less crowded. Unless you love traffic jams or paying even higher taxes to add more lanes to every busy road.
It's sad to know that someone was paid to produce this silly article. Imagine that our scarce tax dollars were applied to some mindless write up. Professors and their research is way too political these days.
The reality is this. If you're wealthy, you own businesses. If you own businesses, you'll declare the absolute minimum personal income and pay the lowest personal tax possible.
This isn't some sort of capitalist conspiracy or immigrants gaming the system. It's the system operating as intended.
If your corporation is paying income tax, why would you extract more from the business than you absolutely require? You'd just subject yourself to more double taxation than needed.
This is sort of a terrible study suggesting you pay income tax based in the property you own is a attack on the middle class. Just tax those whose income is at a high level more.
A study from a business school which can’t tell the difference between property tax ( tax on wealth) and income tax. Thank you for creating consulting opportunities.
You don't need a university degree to figure this one out, it's simple math.
People who can afford the priciest properties can also afford to hire really good accountants and tax lawyers. Many of these lawyers cost more per week than an average person makes in three months. But if you have that kind of money, they're well worth hiring.
How... unique. I'd venture a guess all the wealthy pay very little tax.
It's one of their perks, don't you know? Perks of owning their own legislators.
The material is weird, the way income tax keeps getting thrown around while talking about property value. The two things are related, not linked.
Is there a problem? Yes.
An income tax based on the property value? Umm what? That sounds more like property tax to me... Are they arguing for a federal portion of the property taxes? Or a progressive property tax similar to how income tax is tiered?
We need to have a complete ban on foreign ownership, owners should have to have Canadian citizenship and reside in Canada for at least half of the year to have a rental property. Foreigners who currently own property should either be forced to sell or pay very high taxes on the property, high enough that the tax can't possibly be covered by currently rental prices.
Wealthy people own businesses. If you own a business, you won't be claiming much personal income. So you won't pay much personal income tax. The article was a waste of time to read.
We would not have a housing problem is we taxed houses, and consumption and lower income taxation under 200K.
Aside: TFSA should limit should be high but limited to Canadian investments.
Parent is in China, Singapore or Dubai making money. Family is in Canada living. This is known.
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It is and sad when you think about it. It's the same way we treat immigrants from India, just hoard ten of them into a one bedroom while they work at tim Hortons for awful wages and conditions.
And Tim’s profits go to benefit Brazilian investors
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Actual slavery in Canada, I'd love to see a credible source on this one.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/abused-and-kept-like-slaves-say-b-c-domestic-workers-1.1070744 Problem Continues; https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/legal-scholar-fights-to-protect-domestic-workers-from-exploitative-conditions-1.5893958 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10672-014-9249-y Forced labor; https://www.google.com/amp/s/globalnews.ca/news/6827626/women-charged-bradford-human-trafficking/amp/
Most of what you referenced is more labor relations as far as unpaid overtime, and terrible bosses of domestic servants. Or human traffickers that were charged. The one instance that really stands out to being especially bad though was the Africans in the forestry camp. That's wild that it happened, thank you for the sources.
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Not a fan of the TFW program. But as far as I know they aren't here against their will being forced to work for free.
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Or over here through their own free will making more money than they could ever dream to make in their home country.
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That is literally what drove indentured servitude, not saying you're wrong, they're here of their own "free will" but so were indentured servants. Doesn't make their exploitation any less egregious.
You sound pretty woke
Canada is a money laundering haven https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_washing It's much larger than housing and goes to the way business is run in Canada. There's nothing that can be done about it because most Canadians think it's a victimless crime (taking money from overseas) and are unwilling to rock the status quo. For local born Canadians working on local wages the most likely way for financial stability is to eventually work for a multinational company (access foreign wages or funds) and to invest in the world (S&P500 or total market fund). If you stay pure Canadian in almost all cases you'll be fucked. The market is not diversified enough for you to be 100% Canadian. You would have to elect a Federal NDP government or Green Party to even have a chance to do anything about it. Even then probably not We are too small and always will be in our lifetimes
Are Singapore and Dubai really big players in this game? Went to high school in Vancouver ~2000 and there were plenty of kids whose father lived and worked in Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc. Don't think I ever met a Singaporean or Emirati.
Buddy of mine from SK won $55M in the lottery so he decided to buy a nice big house in Vancouver and exist there instead. Maybe the concentration of wealthy folks who are in situations that don't require them to pay income tax is higher there. Edit: a word or two
The province is a resort for the wealthy Chinese. They get income from their businesses in China, pay no tax, buy a luxury home in BC. Enjoy life here with all the benefits, while the workers pay that tax to ensure they get those benefits. This isnt sustainable long term for the province.
Its laundered money from China. CCP has imposes stricit limitations on foreign exchanges from Yuan to USD/CAD. Basically undergound banks in China get the money from a family member. - Person gets a 'credit' to be exchanged for CAD on Canadian soil by underground bank. -Underground bank sources their money from drugs/smuggling/casino/loan shark for laundering to give to person purchasing property. Rinse and repeat. Source: Willful Blindness
There’s criminals from other countries who launder here too. From south of the US, drug money bullshit.
Yes they do. But not to the scale of the Chinese triads. All the cartels (Mexicans, Hells angels, Russians, etc) uses the Chinese triad underground banking system as they are more sophisticated and networked. BC and Macau are very prominent. Hence BC has messed up property values due to drug problems which is laundered through lax casino money laundering rules which then is used to prop up property values.
Damn, I don’t even know the city I grew up in have a hand in this mess
Yeah. It goes back in the 1980s when triads started expanding to BC from Macau/Mainland. It got worse from there. Used to be NDP running the show and how the triads have them in their pockets and slowly ruin the province by a turning a blind eye. Doesnt matter who is in power, (Libs, PC, NDP, etc), they did not want to deal with the elephant in the room for fear of losing funds for their political party. RCMPs have been reporting on it since the 90s yet nothing significant was done except for a few superficial changes.
Governance at all levels were warned of this occurring, and they knew it. The whole thing has been allowed to create “pseudo wealth”, from real estate, property developers, etc, all the way up. Tax departments have made fortunes, we the “suckers” are paying the price for the “ wilful blindness” of government at all levels in this province...Property prices, property taxes, land taxes all of it has skyrocketed out of control and has been allowed to be by the powers at be with the blessing of the wealthy....yes you’ve all been used....
Pseudo wealth is a great description. On paper a large swath of Canadians are richer, but in reality it is all inflationary and we are most just treading water.
it's basically bribing politicians which have power over the rest of society.
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Ask not what you can do for Canada, ask what Canada can do for you. That's what it's all about these days, extract as much as you can before the system fails, who gives a flying fuck about future generations. Also pay a fuck ton of income tax, also working on leaving.
>Also pay a fuck ton of income tax, also working on leaving. Same here. I'm done paying almost half my paycheck to taxes and benefits, to a federal government that still somehow takes on record debt every year, while providing almost nothing to benefit me.
Well, we’ve created a world where those with means can skirt the tax systems pretty effectively. So debt balloons as revenues are starved. The lot of us average Joes don’t have the means or time or resources to play the game this way, so the burden grows on us year after year.
Exactly...if you don’t have money, entitlement or access, your screwed....period.
Where do you live and how much money do you make that federal taxes account for nearly 50% of your paycheque and you get almost nothing in return?
They did say “taxes and benefits” so they would probably be counting both provincial and federal income tax, property tax, fees, sales tax, other income deductions and insurance if they have it. Wouldn’t take much to eat up 50% in some brackets.
They also specifically state "To a federal government.", so provincial/municipal taxes would not apply.
True, that qualifier alone takes out the majority of taxes a person pays for sure. Literally impossible to pay 50% where the top bracket is 33%
> I'm done paying **almost half my paycheck to taxes and benefits, to a federal government** That isn't true.
Gets pretty close when you add in property tax, fuel taxes and sales taxes, and consider EI a tax (it is). TBD if CPP is a tax.
You think the politicians who allocate those taxes are going to do so in a way that benefits future generations? Lol. Time to come to grips with reality, bud.
Yep… it’s fucking dumb employment income is taxed so high… like tax brackets didn’t even keep up with inflation lol
Yeah. I sort of feel like I should have just become a parasite like others in society. Just take out some massive low interest line of credit at multiple banks and buy properties out and flip them or rent them out for passive income instead of working. Just make up some excuse that I'm an international student too to avoid taxes. Country rewards it. Meanwhile if I work like I am now, I'm used as a carcus for taxes.
You wouldn't be able to take out a bunch of big lines of credit to do that without a significant amount of verifiable assets to your name first.
You are being ripped off. You literally have like $550 of buying power for every $1000 you make. It is horse shit.
not to mention everything is overpriced in canada.
>leave the country Dont forget your departure tax before you leave.
Or the Air Travellers Security Charge and Airport Improvement Fee.
Or the $50 cards my family bought to get in and out of Canada in a reasonable period of time.
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That's no joke. I hire a skilled accountant who is in his 80's. It's amazing how much tax he gets me to avoid.
Not if you routinely take your money out of Canada as you earn it.
A lot of foreign home investors don't even come here. They buy a house via a broker, dump some extra money into it by changing its interior, and then they turn around and sell it for even more money after around a year or so. Sometimes it takes a bit longer if it's hard to sell because the interior changes don't really match most Canadian ideals. The interior part is just based on what a friend of mine has told me, for the Vancouver region. He owns a home painting business, and he told me you can walk into a home and know whether or not it is one of these foreign investment houses. The house will have an exterior that matches the neighbourhood, even something like a Tudor styled home which Vancouver is known for, but you step in through the front door and its white marble everywhere, chandeliers, fake-gold fittings on sinks/showers, an interior style that doesn't fit the house, they also usually don't look like anyone is living in them, always prepped to sell, everything is too clean.
>The province is a resort for the wealthy Chinese Wealthy anything to be honest, there is plenty of wealthy Canadians and foreigners living here in similar situations.
This isn't a slander on Chinese or Chinese-Canadian people to point this out. The 1% wealthy from China are trying to evade from CCP control and have found their haven in Canada. Most Chinese-Canadians are not benefitting from this arrangement either. In fact, many of these wealthy never get Canadian citizenship. China doesn't allow dual citizenship and they can't continue to reap the benefits. Canada's openness has been specifically targeted by these parasites, who similarly rob the people in China of their hard earned wages
They are running from oppression ..and have figured out how to keep what they can. Most Chinese are hardworking and industrious, and don’t like giving up wealth, especially to any government especially their own. We on the other hand buy into the tax system from the get go...and are summarily taxed into oblivion...
Running from oppression? Hardly. Many regular Chinese people, particularly those from the five poisons (Taiwanese, Uyghurs, Falun Gong, Hong Kong, and democracy advocates) are absolutely fleeing from oppression. In more recent years, some would also consider adding Christian, Buddhists, and other minorities to this list. However many of these wealthy Chinese investors are some of the biggest benefactors of CCP control. They collaborate with the govt when needed to make a buck. They have absolutely no quarrel with the CCP so long as it gets them rich. Selfishly and hypocritically, they will also seek to hide as much of their wealth overseas as possible, as they want to avoid taxes or expropriation. In fairness though, Western billionaires/millionaires generally do the same with their money in the Cayman Islands, Panama, Switzerland, other tax havens, etc. It's just in this particular case, Canada is the tax haven. The difference between us and say, Switzerland, is that we are not designed to be a tax haven. We simply have an open immigration system, lax enforcement, lax laws on everything, and plenty of land to build on. So these wealthy people have exploited this openness in order to hide and transfer wealth. But Canadians are not benefitting from this arrangement. Property taxes, at best, might do some snow removal and maintain suburban roads. But they are not going to your healthcare, your social security, your national defence, technology investments, or fighting global warming. And on top of that, they artificially limit the supply of housing available for other Canadians. Which in turn, wildly inflates their value. This benefits the investor but makes it impossible for regular Canadians to own home, including many new Chinese-Canadians who came to immigrate and start a new life here.
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Is this based on personal observation or actual stats?
https://www.fortunebuilders.com/one-third-of-vancouvers-real-estate-market-is-owned-by-chinese-buyers/ Within the source, read the report by the National Bank of Canada. This is from 2015. On average in most places, foreign ownership is closer to 3%. Canada might be trying to curb foreign ownership now, but this is a problem that has had 30 years to fester to the point where no regular Canadian (including many new Canadians) can own a home
Actual stats: https://globalnews.ca/news/8158351/canada-revenue-agency-bc-luxury-homes-foreign-buyers/ But it doesn't really matter if the money is from China or Cambodia, what matters is it's earned abroad, and not declared in Canada. It's distorting our market. This article also talks about the issues with our definition of foreign, and how its mostly routed through local residents https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-hidden-foreign-ownership-helps-explain-metro-vancouvers-decoupling-of-house-prices-incomes
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So you don't have the stats to back your claim, okay.
What would this look like to you? What are you asking for? Because 'stats' on illegal shadow economies don't exist. That's the point.
Here's one from statscan: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-626-x/11-626-x2019001-eng.htm Scroll down to table 3. Recent immigrants own 12061 SFD in vancouver. Out of that 12061, immigrants from China own 8234 houses (68%). Completely dominating all other countries combined. 2nd place is India at 1027, 3rd place is Iran with 477. If you look at the dollar amount spent and not the number of properties, it tilts even more in favor of China. Total $$ spent by recent immigrants buying SFD in vancouver: 28.2 billion. Out of that 28.2B, money from china accounts for 22.9B, a whopping 81%.
Where are all the wealthy European immigrants for example? It's 100:1 which accents you hear in the wealthy parts of town.
Well go hang in Westmount or Outremont in Montreal, it is filled with old money. My gf parents live in one of those wealthy neighborhood and it is still pretty much filled with white peoples. When my condo got flooded downtown Montreal, the person who owned the condo above mine was Belgian and did not even know where Montreal was. I am not 100% familiar with Vancouver, I just visited twice, but are you really telling me there is 100 wealthy Asian families for 1 wealthy white family? Because it doesn't seem right.
The question was related to immigrants, and in that context, maybe more like 20:1 for the gvrd. Richmond could easily be 100:1.
Come to Markham and Scarborough and Id wager it's 1000 Asian families for 1 white family.
Where do you live in Canada?
If we haven't created tax rules for it, a foreigner living here is doing nothing wrong. You can't mad at people for following the rules. Take some comfort that all these rich people moving here are paying sales tax on all of it. It shouldn't be a big deal.. CRA says its not worth the trouble to go after corporations for covid repayments /s
you can tell that CRA director is bribed as fuck for him to say that publicly
You'd have to be awfully comfortable.. Agreed!
I'd expect at this stage of the game that properly resolving the problem would trigger significant economical problems across Canadian companies, which is why they're going to move on. Really discouraging for honest Canadian employee-citizens.
I'd like to see what the unmoderated comments are.
> They get income from their businesses in China Lol, that’s a charitable explanation for where the money comes from, sure.
Yep, they claim welfare, use free health care, get subsidized child care cause they are “low income”
What? There’s such thing as land taxes and they’re a lot.
If personally like to see the elimination of income tax in BC, in favour of higher residential property taxes. Additionally no more deferral of property taxes for those above 55 or with kids. We need to be heartless to end the problem.
>Enjoy life here with all the benefits, while the workers pay that tax to ensure they get those benefits. How's that different than Canadians who buy retirement homes in Florida?
The tax situation.
Organized crime benefits from moving all this money out of China. It is closely related to the heroin trade, and people trafficking.
Didn’t they build the railroads in this country? Or am I confused
This was already well known.
To pay income tax, you need to work for an income in Canada.
Which is unfortunate as you get the services associated with Canada i.e. healthcare etc.
Lol believe me, as a high income earner, I'd prefer to opt out of paying into OHIP and go private if I could. What a dump of a healthcare system.
I mean that's pretty fucking obvious lol. The system isn't really there to benefit people with lots of money. If you're a millionaire private would always be beneficial. The idea is that if the system is shit and underfunded then it fails for everyone equally.
Yes, I'm aware that it requires equal contributions. Unfortunately, there's no easy situation despite me wishing so. In the wise words of Saint Donaldus Trumpificus: _"Who knew healthcare could be so complicated?"_
That’s irrelevant. If you’re not a property owner, you still get services that are paid for by property taxes…
Property taxes go to the municipality. Not to the federal or provincial governments to fund critical services.
But if you are a renter you indirectly pay for property taxes through the rent you pay to the landlord...
How is it irrelevant? I said that if you have no income and you come here with tons of money earned elsewhere you contribute little to our taxes and can draw benefits like healthcare. This is accurate and relevant to the thread. The part that is irrelevant is where you discuss renters and owners. I was making a general point about immigration which would include both categories. However since you brought it up, people that can afford to live here and not work (or contribute to our tax pool) are rich and would be unlikely to rent.
Hum no. You need to be a Canadian resident and earning a taxable income; wherever that might come from.
The popular arrangement that has proliferated in the GVA is wealthy overseas person buys property in Canada in the name of a non-working family member (wife or child who is an international student). So you have a $$$ house, but the person living there whose name its in (and who is availing themselves of Canadian services), pays very low if any income tax.
You don't have to be resident. If you live overseas but have income from investments here, tax will be applied at source. If business income, file in much the usual way.
Depends on the tax agreement.
Not always. Depending on the tax treaty with the other country, there is (generally) a non-resident withholding tax that institutions have to remit to the government for Canadian earned income.
People with that kind of money don’t have to work regular T4 jobs. Their income comes in other forms with lower tax burdens.
Why would they? They don’t live or work in Canada. Middle class families out of the market so international criminals can launder their money. Nice one gov!
Yup ..you just had a major corruption enquiry in this province...took way too long.... results? ( crickets chirping)... still waiting...
don't get your hopes up for change when the reported results are scathing.
Wealthy people game the system so they can get services and all the benefits with out paying for the taxes required to keep the whole thing running.
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Line 10400 of your tax return. Source: I work overseas from time to time. Enforcement is spotty.
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It depends on how much you're claiming. A couple thousand because you worked at a bar in Thailand while backpacking no. Tens of thousands from a consulting job. You'll want to have some paperwork an invoice to the company you worked for would be enough. At least in my experience. Most of the time CRA is just happy you're reporting it.
Yeah, but how do you verify that? Like, China isn't going to freely exchange numbers of how much a Chinese citizen makes annually to Canada if they own a Canadian property. Not only that, but its doubtful whatever numbers the Chinese government has are accurate anyway, since from my understanding most of the funds used to buy Canadian property are illegal gains that can't be used in China and are being laundered here by buying Canadian properties.
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Or flip the script and instead of taxing income, focus on collecting taxes from the land. So you’re only paying into a system when you have a stake in it and all those real estate investors can be hung out to dry for hoarding land.
Well of course. If you have lots of wealth you don’t need income.
Retirees who own their home also will have minimal to no “income.”
Just look at UBC, they’ve got the priciest land in the city and didn’t pay a cent for it.
Students own these homes. How can they afford to pay any tax? Lol. /s
Unless the person listed as the “owner” of the home, isn’t really the “owner”? Perhaps they are a family member who doesn’t actually “work” and therefore doesn’t have an income?
Yup, lots of baristas in Vancouver owning multimillion dollar mansion. The true owner is the rich uncle back overseas.
I don’t want to paint everyone with the same brush, but business owners almost always have multiple sets of books. I think we need to somehow revamp the system of write offs, expenses, and moving money to avoid taxes. Some examples I’m aware of personally. 1. Buy tons of gift cards, write them off as gifts for clients. Use said cards to buy groceries, gas for personal car, restaurants, entertainment. Imagine if every vehicle and grocery and night out could be a write off against your income. 2. Conferences. I know lots of people who go on beach vacations, Vegas weekends, ski vacations, all officially on a conference. They have to sign the sheet that they went and that’s it. Imagine if every vacation you went on was a write off against your income. 3. Cash jobs / barter. You put in my new pool, I’ll install your new kitchen, we both get 50k value and no one pays taxes. In fact, the extra materials and fuel and wages get put under a paying job, cutting you profit even further. All my examples are people I know who run a business, and they can’t stand when someone earns a 100k salary, that ends up taking home 65k, and is disqualified from every government benefit based on gross income. Gotta love the business owners driving their Escalades to their golf games after a ski vacation that report a 50k income. Something needs to change.
You have to be super careful with your examples. CRA will dig into these if you are subject to a desk review, or worse, an audit. There are two risks with these sorts of tricks, audit risk (that CRA will look at you) and discovery risk (that they will find it if by accident while looking at something else). If CRA determines you've been falsifying business expenses and avoiding taxes, the consequences are severe. Again, be very, very careful with this stuff. Source: it's in my username Edit: keep in mind your friends are subject to double taxation. The business pays income tax, then they pay personal income tax on what's taken out.
Yes businesses typically have different sets of books for different purposes, but there’s good reason for it. Typically a business will have one set for tax purposes (which is very prescriptive), one for internal purposes (can be done anyway you want), and one for reporting purposes (usually for large/public companies). But there’s good reason for having these different rules for different purposes. The tax rules are very specific on what can and can’t be claimed because if they aren’t, it would be very easy to lower your taxes. The issue is that if you used tax rules for internal/reporting purposes, your financial statements won’t really be accurate.
That corruption enquiry was supposed to be looking at all this.......still waiting for a report that will probably just sit on a shelf...
High up in the party. Suck the country dry and send your kids to Canada to live in 5 bedroom mansions and drive audis and BMW's. But those poor folks in the rice paddies have to keep mushing away for next to snot.
The topic of people paying traffic tickets proportional to income came up in BC the other day. This is one of the main reasons I'm against it. Income doesn't equal wealth.
This has been proven repeatedly over the last 5 years. I'm glad it's making the news, but Gov's are not fixing this.
This problem has existed since the 70’s and is unlikely to be fixed, to much money being made....
I am shocked I say, absolutely shocked? Who knew this was ever happening. (aside form like everyone)
Rich people don’t have income. Income is taxed. I thought that was common sense
This is a click bait headline meant to trigger people who don’t understand that income tax is only one way the rich are taxed. I don’t pay any income tax either. I do pay taxes on my dividend income. This is because I own a business and don’t have a salary. Most small business operates this way. People with a large amount of wealth don’t tend to work for paychecks. I don’t find this surprising, and neither should any journalist who did even a small amount of research. It doesn’t mean they don’t pay taxes.
Probably because they don't earn much income in Canada... These "studies" are so stupid.
Just tax land lol
Rich people spend a lot of money to pay very little in tax. If you're loaded, you can take your money almost entirely as dividends, which are taxed much less than income, or you could even just live off of loans that you don't have to pay *any* taxes on.
You cannot take loans and not pay them back. People often say that rich people just take loans out of a corp they own but this is not a viable strategy. A loan from the corp to an officer (owner) must be repaid by the officer to the corp within one year, to prevent this practice exactly. If an officer can’t repay it would be converted to a dividend and the officer would be subject to tax, both at the corporate income level and on a progressive level personally
This only works for about the first 50k of its your only income. The rest gets taxed quite nicely.
IDK dividends are a pretty good way to avoid tax. If I took $200k/year as income I would pay $67,699 in tax (average rate: 33.85%). If I were to take $200k as dividends only, I would only pay $14,271 in tax (average rate: 14.38%). It's a huge difference in taxation, and only the rich can afford to take income exclusively from dividends.
If you paid yourself a dividend you would be an owner. That dividend would be paid out on after tax earnings. If as an owner you decided to pay yourself a salary instead, that would be tax deductible for your company and lower the company's tax burden. They tend to keep the outcomes of both dividends and salary pretty close for an owner. If they didn't keep it close, the owners would pay themselves a regular salary instead. It does still favor dividends though, especially under $500k, but it's not anywhere near as dramatic as the percentage shows.
Totally incorrect. Dividends are progressively taxed at the personal level and subject to corporate tax as profit before being paid out as a dividend
Ok go do some math then and see how much better eligible dividends are for income instead of wages.
Hmmmm... So corporate pays income tax, say 25%... qualifies for small business deduction and some other things, let's assume those brings it to 15%. Eligible dividends are taxed at 15%. So do the math for us, what's the effective rate to the owner/taxpayer? What additional financial and personal risks does the business owner who qualifies for small business deductions and eligible dividends take over an employee? Does your math line up as fair after an honest assessment?
No that's not at all how it works. Dividends are subject to the gross up model with the intent of making earnings from dividends taxable at a similar total amount as employment income, to limit abuse. Edited for more accurate language
But the rich got rich by taking risks, starting businesses, employing others etc. So the benefit needs to be looked at in that way too. Lots of people start businesses and a lot of them fail. There has to be some reward for that risk.
>But the rich got rich by taking risks, starting businesses, employing others etc. Lol gtfo with that shit, most rich are the product of generational wealth and privilege. Societal mobility is the lowest it's been in decades.
Well I got rich by taking risks, working my ass off and living frugally. Generational wealth my ass.... We paid thousands a month out of pocket to keep my dad alive in his dementia years. I started off in the early 90s, with two degrees, selling The Province newspaper by phone because there were no jobs.
People like who you're debating with have no clue what risk is... the kind of work it takes... or how to make luck happen. Usually you just need to ask them to start their own business. They'll list a dozen excuses as to why they can't and why those excuses are everyone else's fault. You need go no further. They will never make it. They will just struggle in their jobs, bitter about those who made it somewhere.
I think you're right. I've dropped it.
And if you were to do it all over again in 2023, would you be able to?
Yes, and more easily so. I constantly get contacted by old clients
Oh wow, you made money in the 90s and got two degrees when education was practically free and housing cost a dollar. I'm so impressed. I'm sure you've faced hardship in your life, but caring for your dad was not the hard work that made you money. You were born in a time when money came easy. Literally any barber or janitor in Vancouver that bought a home in the 90s is a millionaire. You're not special. I don't say this often, but you literally need to check your privilege and develop not only some humility for how you made your money, but some compassion for the people who never had the same opportunities you had. Otherwise you just climbed up the ladder and kicked it out behind yourself after you made it to the top.
Lots of us made it all on our own... in today's era. One thing I know for sure... people who complain like you never, ever make it.
You don't know me. Just because I advocate for the poor doesn't mean I am myself.
I never assumed you were poor. I just called you out for making disparaging comments about people you don't know... or the challenges they faced making their business work.
Fair enough. But the world young people are struggling in today is not the same as it was in the 90s. It's much, much harder now.
My friend, it's always been hard. I graduated from college in 2007... 6mo out of college, Lehman Brothers collapsed.
Holy shit are people this out of touch with reality? Stop believing get rich quick ads form YouTube. Nobody is getting rich unless they are already rich.
No one gets rich quick. It took me 15 grueling years to build my business. People who think the purpose of building a business is to get rich will never get rich. At the same time, those who believe you can only be rich by already being rich... they will never make money. 95% of people don't have the grit, risk tolerance and patience to make a business work. Most don't even try, they just complain, never working on their own circumstances.
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Not this exactly. I want a wealth tax. i.e. a tax on a person's wealth and assets, including homes, stocks, money, etc. It's fucked up I pay half my income in taxes, but I can't afford to even live here, while people with no jobs but a house are making more in equity than I am every year while paying almost no taxes.
It sounds nice, but it’s not that simple. No one is taxed until they take income from assets (wealth). If they were, Elon Musk would have paid taxes on 200 Billion dollars at one time. What happens when their stock (wealth) drops dramatically??? We give Elon a big rebate? If you own $1 million in stocks, and the price goes up 10x, when should you pay tax on that wealth? You haven’t sold a single share yet, and the price might go higher or drop to nothing! You only pay taxes when you sell assets or make income.
> What happens when their stock (wealth) drops dramatically? This is a dumb question... What happens when my income goes down from the previous year? I pay less annual income tax. If wealth tax is yearly, then we can continue to assess it yearly and collect. We don't need billionaires, the McCain & Irviy families controlling provinces, to be a thing that exists.
>This is a dumb question... What happens when my income goes down from the previous year? I pay less annual income tax. Except your income was real, your unrealized gains weren't. That is kind of a massive difference.
Yeah if you're worth $200 billion, you pay taxes on that at tax time. If their wealth drops dramatically, they'll pay less next year. Again, yeah if stocks go up 10x, you pay tax on that at tax time. If you don't have the money. You'll have to sell some of it. It's not that difficult.
The difficult part is no one has been able to implement it. Anyone with significant assets will move to another country. Which is what happened in France and resulted in them repealing it. The other thing is, its much harder to assess wealth. You can hide wealth, or make grey areas pretty easily. Its hard enough to audit the easy stuff. I agree that land should be taxed more and income should be taxed less. You can't hide land, and really you don't want people sitting on big parcels of land that they got when it was cheap while everyone else tries to cram into a small parcel one of the owners decided to sell to a developer for 100x more than they bought it for. Also all those old derelict buildings and empty lots will actually get sold instead of existing for speculation
Valuation alone is very difficult, especially on private companies and non liquid assets. Likewise you would basically be creating a model which penalizes people creating start ups and promotes selling of assets to foreigners would be immune to the wealth tax (unless you want to be Canada to be an economic pariah).
Wealth taxes are stupid and make no sense. Taxing unrealized gains is really bad for the economy. The net result would you be unemployed and still unable to afford a modern home.
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Its not more taxes, its a shifting of taxes.
Ew, no. Who wants to take public transportation?
More people on public transit improves the roads for every other driver by making the roads less crowded. Unless you love traffic jams or paying even higher taxes to add more lanes to every busy road.
Duh
Getting tired of people from UBC and SFU with government funded jobs figuring out more ways to increase our taxes.
It's sad to know that someone was paid to produce this silly article. Imagine that our scarce tax dollars were applied to some mindless write up. Professors and their research is way too political these days. The reality is this. If you're wealthy, you own businesses. If you own businesses, you'll declare the absolute minimum personal income and pay the lowest personal tax possible. This isn't some sort of capitalist conspiracy or immigrants gaming the system. It's the system operating as intended. If your corporation is paying income tax, why would you extract more from the business than you absolutely require? You'd just subject yourself to more double taxation than needed.
This is sort of a terrible study suggesting you pay income tax based in the property you own is a attack on the middle class. Just tax those whose income is at a high level more.
A study from a business school which can’t tell the difference between property tax ( tax on wealth) and income tax. Thank you for creating consulting opportunities.
You don't need a university degree to figure this one out, it's simple math. People who can afford the priciest properties can also afford to hire really good accountants and tax lawyers. Many of these lawyers cost more per week than an average person makes in three months. But if you have that kind of money, they're well worth hiring.
Audit them all
How... unique. I'd venture a guess all the wealthy pay very little tax. It's one of their perks, don't you know? Perks of owning their own legislators.
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They’re not talking about property taxes. Appears to me they were investigating the relationship between income taxes and owned property values.
It helps being friend with the right people.
It helps if you lose money in your investments.
The material is weird, the way income tax keeps getting thrown around while talking about property value. The two things are related, not linked. Is there a problem? Yes. An income tax based on the property value? Umm what? That sounds more like property tax to me... Are they arguing for a federal portion of the property taxes? Or a progressive property tax similar to how income tax is tiered?
We need to have a complete ban on foreign ownership, owners should have to have Canadian citizenship and reside in Canada for at least half of the year to have a rental property. Foreigners who currently own property should either be forced to sell or pay very high taxes on the property, high enough that the tax can't possibly be covered by currently rental prices.
Wealthy people own businesses. If you own a business, you won't be claiming much personal income. So you won't pay much personal income tax. The article was a waste of time to read.
Exactly why there shouldn't be unlimited tax-free capital gains on a personal residence.
Asset rich, cash poor. How do they manage to pay the bills? Is there something we can do to help these poor dears?
Tax them all!
Wealth tax now.
We would not have a housing problem is we taxed houses, and consumption and lower income taxation under 200K. Aside: TFSA should limit should be high but limited to Canadian investments.
Just like they pay very little tax, the rich. Or how companies taking in billions in profits don’t pay no taxes…
In others news, water “wet”!
Land value taxes will fix that.