Owners of vacant homes in Vancouver will face tougher sanctions next year.
Vancouver City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to approve an increase in the city’s empty home tax from three percent to five percent for the 2023 reference year.
The tax increase was proposed by Mayor Kennedy Stewart, who also spearheaded the tax increase to three percent last year.
Read more: Vancouver raises tax on empty homes to 3% in 2021
The proposal, approved on Wednesday, will also double the number of audits carried out under the program to 20,000 in 2023.
City officials also aimed to explore the effects of a re-doubling of up to 10 percent and to evaluate changes in current exemptions to improve justice so that people with legitimate reasons for vacancies are not punished.
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1:58 The city of Vancouver asks the province to consider a tax on empty shops The city of Vancouver asks the province to consider a tax on empty shops
Officials were also tasked with exploring how the tax could be used to combat short-term rental property and how to counter tax evasion, as well as
The mayor’s office says preliminary data from the empty housing tax for 2021 show a decline in the number of vacant properties in the city and a doubling of revenues for affordable housing initiatives.
Read more: Vancouver Council votes to investigate controversial empty shop tax
The Vancouver Vacancy Tax first went into effect in 2017 at one percent of the appraised value of housing and was tripled to three percent in fiscal 2021 – a key campaign promise in Stewart’s 2018 election campaign.
The city’s annual vacancy tax for 2020 found that the number of vacant properties in Vancouver fell by 26% between 2017 and 2020.
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