You've probably already heard that Toronto mayor David Miller and his money-hungry members of city council are chomping at the bit to use their newly received taxing powers in the city and one of the biggest bites is a plan to essentially double the existing Land Transfer Tax on the sale of homes.
It seems that they find it too difficult and too much effort to find ways to SAVE money and that the easier way (for starters) is to simply tax the home buyers.
If you think that just because you don't live within the city of Toronto that this doesn't affect you, you're only half right. It might not affect you immediately. But what it does is create a fairly significant tax disparity between the city and the surrounding areas *for the time being*.
Assume it gets passed. Now that the bar has been set, the surrounding municipalities will be encouraged to do likewise for their own areas - a huge new source of cash for each of them and all they're doing is "leveling the playing field"; not driving away homeowners.
With the current average home price hovering around $365,000, isn't buying a home in the GTA isn't already expensive enough?
For the average priced home ($365,000), the current Land Transfer Tax is $3,950.
With the proposed new Toronto tax, that would rise to $7,900!!!!
Once this tax is in, they just sit back and watch house prices rise and then receive an ever-increasing amount in their own pockets because it's a percent of the transaction amount.
Voice your objections at http://nohomebuyingtax.com/
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