Taxes are the reason many people will never be able to buy a home in Vancouver: CTF

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VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Buying a home in Vancouver would be more attainable if there weren’t so many different taxes on new properties.

That’s the message from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which says you’ll pay more than 100 different taxes at the various levels of government combined.

“What we discovered was that there’s 107 different taxes at least on new housing in the City of Vancouver. This contributes to about $109,000 of tax on a $400,000 condo. That’s actually a tax rate of about 37 per cent,” says the CTF’s Jordan Bateman.

The group’s research was done at the behest of local developer Bob Rennie.

“If you actually start doing the math, you realize a condo without taxes would cost well under $300,000. We actually think there’s an argument you could go even lower, if you included cost of the land bump as far as the Agricultural Land Reserve and some hidden taxes that we’re still trying to flush out,” says Bateman.

One that they point to as excessive occurs whenever a building goes up next to TransLink overhead trolley wires.

“You actually have to hire, at $90 an hour, someone who sits in a lawn chair to watches the wires. They don’t have a radio. They don’t have any electrical expertise. They’re just there to watch the wires. One builder said that added almost $300,000 to his project,” says Bateman.

That added up to just under $2,000 per unit.

Bateman says politicians need to look at the tax burden instead of elsewhere when trying to find a way to make the market more affordable.

“You could get a pretty nice condo for about $300,000 if it wasn’t for all the taxes. This is something we think politicians need to keep in mind when they’re so busy pointing figures at every other factor for housing affordability.”

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