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.
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.
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.