Homeowners who forgot to claim occupancy have been hit with vacancy tax bills as of yesterday and homeowners are not happy. Shauna Hunt has the details.
Chow, many councilors a d many of Toronto voters are just idiots and lazy. Woke makes us hard working middle class broke. Stealing money from folks who pay taxes. Many old and immigrant home owners are paying vacant tax without even knowing about it because some are on auto pay. And others don't understand or know about it. Wokes will say well, it's their responsibility. It's not their responsibility to pay for politician failures and lazy people life style.
Chow is in the seat now and this 'new tax' on the residents should have been cancelled as soon as she took office. What a scam. Residents will be leaving Toronto in the thousands with this irresponsible Government. The Premier needs to step in here.
@@phillydisco Ummm, I've owned my home for 23 years, never even rented a room ever and I still have to declare. So that is BS, everyone has to declare. Lets face it the government loves to inconvenience you and pull little fees out of you here and there. Our old health cards, the red and whites used to be lifetime, now you have to renew every 5 years, why?
The city is so desperate to generate revenue, they let a faulty program like this exist. Someone who has owned their home for more than 10 years should automatically be exempt from even having to declare anything.
To simplify things, the city should simply the procedure by requiring residents to pay their property taxes online after confirming that whether the property is a primary or secondary residence and including their hydro bill number (so the city can selectively check the kw usage of the property with the utility to confirm that the building is in fact occupied).
People who do not know better will pay the higher amount for lack of understanding they've been scammed by their municipal government. Sad part, people with property tax accounts will be increased automatically because they signed up for automatic payment from their bank accounts. To this day I receive monthly bills and pay them as they come rather than signing up an automatic payment withdrawal from my bank account.
800,000 declarations in 2022. About 2K self-declared vacant and 44K were deemed vacant because they did not declare. In the end, there are less than 50K vacant homes in the city. So why make 750,000 homeowners jump through hoops every year? And to make matters worse, if the homeowner misses the deadline, they can’t make a late declaration, their home is deemed vacant, the VHT applied and they have to jump through more hoops via an appeal process. Homeowners should only have to declare every two or three years, and the city focus on auditing based on utility consumption. Homes that are consuming below average hydro, water, gas should be flagged as possibly vacant and audited. Occupied homes aren’t subject to VHT, while some people who have vacant home may lie to avoid VHT. So really… the city needs to focus on auditing anyways.
I am on the same boat as I didn't know I had to do this every year as yes I got the first letter in 2022 and thought that was the end of it. I have to admit I am 3 months behind in my property taxes as I was laid off from my job in January and I am finally getting back to work and if they need proof I live at my address they can come see for themselves as I got dinged with a $3600 bill
Poor immigrants and old folks who are paying this tax without understanding or knowing about it. Home owners work their butts off to pay taxes. Chow needs to resign cash grab. On top of a 10% tax hike.
@@phillydisco You’ve never had a job with real responsibilities have you? Yes, you’re “responsible” for your job but you don’t carry the blame for everything that happened in the decade before you showed up. Things will come up, and you deal with them as best you can. If someone wants to point their finger at you for everything you just ignore them because that’s not even worth responding to.
Or outside Canada where you can do whatever you want with your property, unlike in Canada where the government dictates what you should do !!!! Or shouldn't do.....
