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Lead out in cuffs posted:(This is also kinda relevant to me because my landlord is definitely not resident for tax purposes, and while there is a property manager, a. he's a personal friend of the landlord, and b. I don't think the law absolves you as a tenant of liability just because there's a property manager. I don't even think you're supposed to allow the property manager to be the one withholding the tax. The way it's written you as tenant always have to do the withholding.) I haven’t read the law, but I have seen in multiple articles that the property manager—if they’re in Canada—is responsible for the withholding. It might depend on how the payment is made (through the property manager and they take a cut before passing it to the owner, vs directly to the owner and they pay a fee to the manager separately).
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Apr 13, 2024 16:55
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Lead out in cuffs posted:My understanding of the ruling (and the CRA advice on their own website, and various articles by lawyers over the past few years) is that the issue is with the legislation itself. Parliament wrote the law this way, and Parliament has to fix it. at the very least my understanding is the tax act gives them discretion to not levy interest or penalties but they didn't even do that much in this case
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Apr 13, 2024 20:04
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I found the judgment details here if anyone wants to dig in. edit: IANAL obviously but reading point [41] in the decision seems to indicate that anyone renting from a foreign owner ought to be withholding and remitting to the CRA, without fail. The onus is on the owner file their taxes to get the owing amount adjusted and refunded if too much was withheld. There is no mention of a clearance certificate as can be obtained in the case of a property sale by a foreign owner. Also as per point [44] ignorance of the landlord's tax status is explicitly irrelevant so I guess every tenant in Canada should always just withhold the tax and remit to the CRA and let their landlord sort it out with the CRA, just to be safe. And I mean literally every tenant. You never know when your landlord is going to lose their resident tax status. Hell, my new landlords are Polish immigrants, sure they have a business and a home and several condos here but YOU NEVER KNOW so... hmm... This poo poo is absolutely bonkers. Cold on a Cob fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Apr 13, 2024 |
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Apr 13, 2024 20:27
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Crazy you can operate a business in a country without registering it.
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Apr 14, 2024 18:56
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yippee cahier posted:Crazy you can operate a business in a country without registering it. Would be super easy to just say "only residents, citizens, or Canadian companies can own housing" and then these people would just set up LLCs and everything would be fine.
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Apr 14, 2024 19:06
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Cold on a Cob posted:I found the judgment details here if anyone wants to dig in. Just lien the property immediately and move to foreclose for non payment, problem solved
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Apr 14, 2024 19:52
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Reading the court documents it seems there was a lot of argument around the tenant couldn't possibly have known the LL was a non-resident, but the judge didn't accept it because he was mailing an Italian email address and had mail from her in Italian. I wonder if you could just get off the hook easily by getting the landlord to sign a statement that they are a resident of Canada and that they promise to notify the tenant if their status changes, and that the tenant will not be held liable for any tax burden as a result of the landlord failing to notify the tenant of a change of status. Kind of like what the bank does every so often if you're an immigrant, they'll send you a notice that you have to return swearing that you are a tax resident of Canada. Maybe then the discussion moves away from the tenant being liable and more in the direction of being a victim of tax fraud, and the LL is a tax cheat. But IDK.
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Apr 14, 2024 21:23
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That still puts onus on the tenant for something that absolutely should not be their problem. In no circumstances should a tenant need to be aware of the tax status of their landlord, they are an uninvolved party. I really don't get what the problem is here. You ask the non-resident landlord to pay the taxes. If they don't you seize their property and hand it over to a non-profit housing organization. At no point should the tenant need to care about any of this poo poo. It sounds like this is down to some very stupid legislation.
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Apr 15, 2024 13:36
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Yeah good luck getting declarations from your landlord in a rental environment where you have to send in a dossier including testimonials to the character of your children just to get to the top of the pile of applicants for a unit. Maybe once the lease is signed, but then you're having to basically make threats. "Hi I'm going to need a certificate from the CRA showing that you're a tax resident of Canada or I'm going to have to start withholding 25% of my rent."
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Apr 15, 2024 15:41
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I’m not saying it’s reasonable, I’m just saying that maybe that’s a way for a tenant to protect themselves. Obviously the law should be changed so that a tenant is not treated the same as a financial institution.
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Apr 15, 2024 15:48
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The only reason that I could see the CRA going after the tenant is that they think the tenant and the owner were colluding somehow (the tenant was of Italian descent) Otherwise 1. the CRA went after the wrong target 2. The defense lawyer was bad 3. The judge is a dope The owner should have paid the taxes because she will have a tenant from hell now (deservingly so) Ideally, the tenant should be able to apply any incurred fines, withholding, court costs against incurred rent and live there until the balance is zeroed. Maybe just squat forever and just keep paying the 25% to the CRA. The owner is lazy/stupid because with depreciation, she would get most of the withholding back each year if she bothered to file a non resident tax return. She is also probably not reporting properly in Italy so the CRA or tenant should also contact the Italian tax authorities.
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Apr 15, 2024 17:29
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I know it would never happen but I'd love to see tenants rights strengthened in respect to owners changing. Once a unit is rented it should be treated as essentially being owned by that tenant so long as they are paying rent. It should not matter who they are paying rent to. Legally there should be absolutely no change in their tenancy and general security within their unit if the owners change, even if it's a bank foreclosing or the government seizing the building. That's all just poo poo going on in the background and the law should ensure smooth continuous secure occupancy of one's home. -New owner buys a house with a suite in the basement but doesn't want to have a tenant? Sorry, you shouldn't have bought a house with a renter in it, tough poo poo. Either bribe them to leave, wait it out, or buy a different house. -Landlord's daughter is coming back to town after university so they want her to live in their suite instead of their tenant? That's totally fine, you can sell your house and buy a new one with an empty suite in it for her. No you don't get to kick a human from their home because of bloodlines. -Landlords turns out to be a drug lord who has also been cheating on their taxes and the whole building is being taken as proceeds of crime? No change for the tenants, just let them know who to send rent to. -Landlord wants tenants out because they want to tear down their little 4-plex and build something bigger? More density is great, more housing is great! Hope you're able to negotiate terms for them to leave, otherwise you're out of luck because there's no mechanism to force them out. The only actual ways to remove a tenant: -They haven't paid rent in X months. -The tenant is abusive/violent or extremely disruptive and a hazard to other people in the building.
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Apr 15, 2024 17:48
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/housing-prices-affordability-real-estate-1.7170775 A relatively decent article on how no politician really wants to deflate home prices and how Canadian domestic investors are a real driver, along with our complete inability to see homes as shelter and not a financial investment. But then this amazing quote which reminds me business schools are so dumb and I can't believe they get paid to say this Guelph Professor of Real Estate posted:Governments also have an interest in high property values because they translate to larger tax revenue, said Diana Mok, associate professor of real estate at the Lang School of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph in southern Ontario. I'm convinced between this and marginal tax rates any hope of civic education on policy is just lost. This is why no one even tries to understand the carbon tax
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Apr 15, 2024 17:50
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Segue posted:https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/housing-prices-affordability-real-estate-1.7170775 Yeah when I mentioned to my father-in-law about friends who want to move to Calgary from Vancouver because houses cost about 2.5x less than in Vancouver and they could actually afford to buy one, his response was to harp on about "oh I wouldn't do that, the Federal Government doesn't like oil, and the property prices are just going to go down further in Alberta". Like sure dude, but I can 100% guarantee that my friends give zero fucks about the value of the house as an investment. They want a SFH with a backyard, and Calgary is how they see that happening for them. He's made a ton of money on housing, and just can't conceive of it *not* being an investment vehicle.
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Apr 15, 2024 18:32
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Baronjutter posted:Once a unit is rented it should be treated as essentially being owned by that tenant so long as they are paying rent. The solution is more government owned rental buildings designed for the middle class that are not crap. Raise taxes to pay for it.
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Apr 15, 2024 20:14
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Really the entire concept of basement suites, both that 1) homeowners need a "mortgage helper" to afford to get by and 2) that renters would be satisfied in living in a basement, was pretty clearly a sign from long long ago that the housing system was already dysfunctional and there was a shortage of good rental options. The shortage of rental options raised potential rents, which then incentivized homeowners to rent out lovely basements illegally, which then created cashflow out of thin air, which thus resulted in higher possible loans to be serviced, which enabled house values to lift off further and for people with otherwise unremarkable incomes to afford dramatically more expensive SFHs. Now we're at the point where every new build "SFH" is guaranteed to be a defacto duplex (or if coach home triplex) because so much revenue is required to service the mortgage. Way back in the late 90s/early 00s when municipalities were wringing their hands about whether or not to legalize basement suites they really should have recognized that the big problem that needed fixing was that renters were considering living in a poorly renovated basement to be a good idea, and that they clearly needed to allow more apartments. Femtosecond fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Apr 15, 2024 |
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Apr 15, 2024 20:47
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I think basement suites are ok if they're up to code (a lot aren't and enforcement is patchy). But I'd like to see them taxed as rental income rather than the CRA being "oh it's just part of your primary residence". The funniest thing about them is how all the suburban municipalities' main requirement for a suite to be legal is that there has to be an off-street parking spot. Just totally allergic to increasing density.
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Apr 15, 2024 21:00
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Baronjutter posted:I know it would never happen but I'd love to see tenants rights strengthened in respect to owners changing. Once a unit is rented it should be treated as essentially being owned by that tenant so long as they are paying rent. It should not matter who they are paying rent to. Legally there should be absolutely no change in their tenancy and general security within their unit if the owners change, even if it's a bank foreclosing or the government seizing the building. That's all just poo poo going on in the background and the law should ensure smooth continuous secure occupancy of one's home. Hello, IMF? I’d like to report a lack of respect for private property.
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Apr 15, 2024 23:21
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Honestly as I shop for a new house now, it's wild how lovely some of these
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Apr 16, 2024 00:18
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I think basement suites are ok if they're up to code (a lot aren't and enforcement is patchy). But I'd like to see them taxed as rental income rather than the CRA being "oh it's just part of your primary residence". They are taxed as rental income, except that reporting the income is optional
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Apr 16, 2024 00:33
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One weird trick tenants don't want you to know!
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Apr 16, 2024 02:25
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Mantle posted:They are taxed as rental income, except that reporting the income is optional It also turns out that if you take a loss on operating a rental property, CRA doesn’t give a poo poo and you just suck it up, which tbh I was glad to hear. (Our tenant hasn’t paid rent in a year+ because her job went away and she doesn’t have Canadian work experience, so we’ve been eating the operating costs of the unit. Better us than her, etc, but it’s darkly amusing that with everything CRA allows you to deduct, this isn’t one.)
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Apr 16, 2024 02:36
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Old article from earlier this month that shows how bad things are right now. quote:Canada’s housing crisis poised to worsen without major reforms, RBC report says Budget day tomorrow. We already have heard some things about what will be in it and it sounds like there will be heaps of housing stuff to try to tackle these problems.
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Apr 16, 2024 04:50
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They're not going to announce building a million new units of public housing in the next 3 years so best temper your expectations for anything besides more bullshit boutique first-time homebuyer tax credits. Also raise loving capital gains taxes already.
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Apr 16, 2024 06:49
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There’s a lot of optimism that BoC is going to cut rates soon. Odd considering that’s now all but impossible in the states and they’re even talking about rate hikes again. Wonder if this budget is at least partially intended to soften the blow when people’s expectations of being able to renew at 2017 rates next year are smashed.
qhat fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 13:33
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Yeah, we're putting most of our extra into the 'bonus' payments you can do on mortgages. We're renewing in about a year and it certainly won't be at the rate we had in 2020. We had hoped for at least about a 1% cut by that time but that's looking fairly uncertain.
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Apr 16, 2024 13:53
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qhat posted:Wonder if this budget is at least partially intended to soften the blow when people’s expectations of being able to renew at 2017 rates next year are smashed. Are people actually dumb enough to expect that? That would require 400 bps of cuts.
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Apr 16, 2024 13:57
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tagesschau posted:Are people actually dumb enough to expect that? Yes, this is something Canadians believe is a possibility. Maybe not 400bps but y’know, something significant that means number continues to go up.
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Apr 16, 2024 14:43
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The more "reasonable" expectation by analysts is 150 by end of year and even that seems insane to me
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Apr 16, 2024 17:14
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I'm surprised (but I shouldn't be) at how many people I hear saying there will be 4 - 5 rate cuts this year each being 50 - 75 bps.
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Apr 16, 2024 17:25
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My banker was trying to convince me like 5.8% variable was better than 5.0% fixed because rates will go down at some point lol
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Apr 16, 2024 17:39
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COPE 27 posted:My banker was trying to convince me like 5.8% variable was better than 5.0% fixed because rates will go down at some point lol It's not your banker's opinion, it's actually the bank's opinion that the rates will go down during the comparable period of the fixed rate term. Otherwise they wouldn't be pricing their fixed rates that way. They're making billion dollar bets on being right. This is kind of like an individual investor in the market thinking they're trading with pickup ball guys when it's really LeBron James on the other side of the trade.
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Apr 16, 2024 18:00
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Mantle posted:It's not your banker's opinion, it's actually the bank's opinion that the rates will go down during the comparable period of the fixed rate term. Otherwise they wouldn't be pricing their fixed rates that way. They're making billion dollar bets on being right. Hey now. These are Canadian banks. So it's more like Brian Scalabrine at best.
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Apr 16, 2024 20:53
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Precambrian Video Games posted:Also raise loving capital gains taxes already. Wow they actually will... a bit: quote:The budget raises the inclusion rate of what can be taxed for individuals from 50 to 67 per cent on annual capital gains above $250,000. Do I have to give Freeland the tiniest bit of credit? Well, nobody's forcing me. But also there's no drat reason for the inclusion rate to be less than 100% or for principal residences to be exempted.
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Apr 16, 2024 21:21
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I was expecting an income tax increase but this imo is better and doesn't penalize people with large incomes like doctors but not yet actually wealthy. And yes let's start taxing housing gains already for fucks sake.
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Apr 16, 2024 21:24
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COPE 27 posted:My banker was trying to convince me like 5.8% variable was better than 5.0% fixed because rates will go down at some point lol If the bank didn't think rates would go down they wouldn't price variables higher than fixed. This is like when rates were rock-bottom but some people were grabbing variables because they were even MORE rock-bottom. This should have been taken as a clear indicator that banks thought rates were going to go up but people just saw a deal. That said, you are indeed still making a bet on how much it goes down and how quickly. I'll see how the year progresses particularly with what the US ends up doing, but I might actually consider a variable rate next time.
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Apr 17, 2024 14:01
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man, a lot of temporarily-embarrassed “entrepreneurs” wailing about Freeland killing innovation in Canada (along with a lot of people whose were already massively financially successful and whose lives will not be altered by a small increase in overall cap gains taxation) like what the gently caress, you win the lottery and sell your company for $100M to you, paid all at once in a single tax year because you’re naive as all hell and so was your acquirer. you end up with $63M instead of $73M. it’ll be fine, you’ll be fine, suck it up you dumb baby
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Apr 17, 2024 14:27
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Yeah I understand it's a bet on rates going down quickly, my point is it's a dumb bet.
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Apr 17, 2024 14:30
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Subjunctive posted:man, a lot of temporarily-embarrassed “entrepreneurs” wailing about Freeland killing innovation in Canada (along with a lot of people whose were already massively financially successful and whose lives will not be altered by a small increase in overall cap gains taxation) Ahhh "innovation." I wonder if those guys realize that there are, in fact, a lot of challenges that don't need any "innovation" to solve. Like, the reason we don't have houses and jobs is not that we haven't innovated enough, it's that we used to build houses and have labor unions.
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Apr 17, 2024 15:04
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Muscle Tracer posted:Ahhh "innovation." I wonder if those guys realize that there are, in fact, a lot of challenges that don't need any "innovation" to solve. Like, the reason we don't have houses and jobs is not that we haven't innovated enough, it's that we used to build houses and have labor unions. But what if quantum computing, blockchain, and 3d printing could solve our housing crisis?!?
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Apr 17, 2024 19:15
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