While the government bends over backwards promising Canadians it’s not going to introduce a tax on the sale of your home, it’s also been spending your money figuring out how to implement a tax to do just that.
Something doesn’t add up. Why spend money on something you have no intention of following through with? And let’s be clear — the Liberals are spending lots of time and money dreaming up new ways to tax your home.
Right now, the profit you make from the sale of your home is exempt from the capital gains tax.
That’s a good thing. Canadians work hard for equity in their homes and many rely on that equity to finance their golden years.
Warning signs keep popping up to make taxpayers worry that the government wants to tax that home equity.
The first step toward a Liberal home equity tax came in 2016, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mandated that Canadians report the sale of their home to the Canada Revenue Agency, even though it’s tax exempt. Why would the taxman care about you selling your home if he’s not planning on taxing it?
And the government’s actions only get more damning from there.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation gave a group called Generation Squeeze $250,000 to write a report on home equity taxes. The report, published in 2022, calls for a home equity tax targeting the “housing wealth windfalls gained by many homeowners while they sleep and watch TV.”
Canadians work hard for equity in their homes. Years spent paying down a mortgage and renovating and maintaining your home hardly count as money magically appearing while you doze off and the TV plays in the background.
As if that report wasn’t bad enough, CMHC gave Generation Squeeze an additional $200,000 to influence public opinion in favour of a home equity tax.
All that money spent trying to promote a new tax on homes didn’t pay off for the federal government.
The CMHC conducted an in-house study into home equity taxes after the report by Generation Squeeze was published. Of the 3,093 Canadians who submitted comments, 95% opposed a home equity tax, while 5% were neutral.
“Negative conversation was driven by … the majority of the general population,” according to the CMHC.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation asked the CMHC whether it would continue to spend taxpayer money to promote a home equity tax. The CMHC responded that “further work in this area was not necessary.”
Necessary or not, the federal government has continued to quietly lay the groundwork for home equity taxes.
The head of Generation Squeeze was invited to speak at a 2023 Liberal cabinet retreat in Prince Edward Island.
Trudeau, then-finance minister Chrystia Freeland and federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh all attended private town halls and appeared on podcasts hosted by Generation Squeeze in 2023 or 2024.
At the same time Trudeau and Freeland were delivering closed-door talks to the home equity tax lobby group, cabinet again polled Canadians on home equity taxes.
When focus group participants were asked whether they thought it was fair that homes are exempt from the capital gains tax, “all believed that it was,” according to documents obtained by investigative journalists at Blacklock’s Reporter.
Despite hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars spent by the Liberal government studying and promoting home equity taxes, Canadians still hate the idea.
Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. And the federal government has been sending out home equity tax smoke signals that you can see from space.
The government must stop spending money figuring out how to implement a wildly unpopular tax on homes. The next prime minister should remove the CRA reporting requirement when you sell your home.
You build more homes by swinging hammers, not by hiking taxes.
Carson Binda is B.C. director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation