Foreign buyer tax alone won’t fix Toronto housing crisis: report
TORONTO — A new report suggests a foreign buyer tax alone can’t solve Toronto’s soaring housing prices.
The report, titled “In High Demand” and released Monday by Ryerson University’s City Building Institute, favours a tax on foreign buyers — similar to the one introduced in Vancouver last summer — but suggests it should be implemented in addition to a “progressive surtax” on expensive homes owned by people who aren’t paying income tax, including people with foreign capital.
“The surtax essentially gets wiped out if you’re earning money locally and paying taxes locally or in Canada,” said report author Josh Gordon, an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University.
It’s a system that hasn’t been implemented elsewhere, Gordon said, though it was first proposed several months ago by his colleague Rhys Kesselman.