• Pxtl@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Blaming corporations is a cop-out. Small “mom and pop” landlords are just as capable of gouging their fellow Canadians for profit. At least there are real-estate corporations that build stuff instead of being purely parasitic.

    And at least the corps have to pay tax on their profits. Private owners who bought when things were cheap and are now multimillionaires got all that money effort-free and tax-free thanks to the principal residence exception.

    • karlhungus@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      This stinks. I’m not a landlord, I do own my own house.

      And at least the corps have to pay tax on their profits

      I wish i payed 15%. I’m not even counting on the rebates they get for setting up shop places, or developing “doing research”. Corporations quite often do not pay their fair share. Corporations do buy up swaths of real estate.

      Private owners who bought when things were cheap and are now multimillionaires got all that money effort-free and tax-free thanks to the principal residence exception.

      Almost nobody got their shit effort-free, you still have to go in with the bank and pay them a shit tonne of money. Principal residence only applies to first residence, and you still have to pay taxes on your residence (I know, because I pay them).

      And here’s some news for you: housing was always relatively expensive, people who bought gigantic mortgages took on a whole pile of risk, made the banks rich, and sometimes came out richer for it; that doesn’t make them bad.

      • Pxtl@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        If you bought your house in 1986 for $60k, and then sold it in 2021 for a $million, and you lived in it for those 25 years as your principal residence, then that is tax-free.

        Obviously this is less about landlords than just homeowners who are celebrating their good fortune, but still: blaming corporations is a cop-out.

        • ConfuzedAZ@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, that one is well known. I was trying to figure out how they made that work with rentals, which don’t have that exclusive.

        • PaganDude@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Sorry, but how does that tax exemption work for the landlords then? They have to live in the unit for at least a year to avoid capital gain on the property.

        • karlhungus@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          That’s 9%/year annual rate of return (assuming 2% inflation), which is good, but not unheard of (here’s the calculator i used. This ignores all the money they put into the place while they lived in it (roof’s and heaters etc aren’t cheap). It also discounts that they need to find a place to live in 2021 where all houses just got much more expensive then back in 1986.

          That whole time they were paying property tax.