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from the for-$10K/year-I'll-make-a-house-look-lived-in dept.
Vancouver, suffering from a near-zero supply of homes available for rent, plans to slap investors sitting on vacant properties with a new tax in an effort to make housing more accessible in Canada's most-expensive property market.
The levy, which would start in January, may be as high as 2 percent of the property's assessed value, Kathleen Llewellyn-Thomas, the city's general manager of community services, told reporters Wednesday. That would mean a minimum C$20,000 ($15,000) annual payment for the typical C$1 million-plus detached home in Vancouver based on July 2015 assessment data, the most recent available.
"Vancouver is in a rental housing crisis," said Mayor Gregor Robertson, whose announcement follows a separate measure by the province in July to impose a 15 percent tax on foreign buyers. "Dangerously low vacancy rates across the city are near zero."
Vancouver is penalizing property owners for not renting empty buildings.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aristarchus on Friday September 16 2016, @04:30AM
There is a huge difference between Merchantilism and Capitalism. Capitalism is based on the productive employment of capital (doh!) to further production, and hopefully a parasitic margin off the top: Profit! Mercs are more aimed at just controlling property, creating artificial scarcity, and fleecing the plebs. We refer to it in our all new Web 2.0 economy as "rent-seeking behavior", with the great examples being copyright controls and patent claims. These do not produce progress, or profit, they just provide a means of extortion through property law, and such things are to be made illegal. If you own residential property, and you do not actually live in it, we want your kidney. If you own residential property, and you do not live in it, nor do you rent it out at market rates to normal people, we want your liver. And if you own a lot of residential property that you are not renting precisely to drive up the rental rates, we want a pound of your flesh closest to your heart.