Clark hints at tax residency disclosure for foreign buyers
Posted September 19, 2016 6:46 pm.
Last Updated September 19, 2016 6:47 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
BURNABY (NEWS 1130) – Foreign home buyers may eventually need to prove where they pay taxes.
Premier Christy Clark hinted at the news during a housing announcement Monday, saying the province will do everything it can to collect data for the Canadian Revenue Agency, including creating a “tax residency box” on property taxes which would tell the government whether someone who owned property in BC also contributed to Canadian coffers.
“It’s something that we’re considering doing,” Clark says. “We are working with the federal government though, because we need to make sure they’re going to make use of the information that we’re giving them. So our question for them is ‘tell us exactly what it is you need to make sure you can do your job better.'”
Back in June, the province made it mandatory for people who purchase residential property in BC to disclose their citizenship or permanent residency if it wasn’t Canadian.
Both the new requirement and Clark’s statement go against BC Housing Minister Rich Coleman’s comments last year that the province didn’t have any plans to collect data on foreign ownership.
“If there’s more information that we should be collecting that will be helpful to the federal government in policing money laundering, we are going to find a way to do that,” Clark says.
