3 ms·
How do they verify that it's empty? Is there some national registry of people's declared residence, and if that property is not occupied by someone's primary r
by supernova87a 6y ago
How do they verify that it's empty? Is there some national registry of people's declared residence, and if that property is not occupied by someone's primary residence, it gets taxed at this penalty rate?
- aaomidi 6y agoIt's...really not that hard to tell if a residence is being used or not. It doesn't even need to be a national registry if people. You know who owns what house and who is married to who. You also know who is living where. With the data states have in the US I can get a pretty confident list of empty houses.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoCould also obtain water usage data from the city water dept. Fairly reliable indicator of occupancy, although you’d need to ensure someone wasn’t running the taps needlessly to avoid the tax.
- abraae 6y agoFairly easily gamed though with some sort of IoT taps.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sparrc 6y agoThey rely on property owners (and probably usually property management companies) to self-declare: https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/declare-property-status.aspx https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/declare-prope...
- slavik81 6y agoIMO, it makes more sense just to have a high property tax rate and return funds to residents (either directly, or through well-funded city services). It achieves basically the same thing in the end, but with less fiddling over details like verifying emptiness.
- dionidium 6y agoIn the U.S. the IRS determines your "primary address" based on where you physically spend the most time [0]. I'm sure Canada has similar rules for tax purposes and cities could get this info from local and national tax returns. [0] More or less: https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn/primary-residence https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn/primary-residence