Number of properties affected by speculation tax expected to drop: Vernon mayor

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“If you’re a B.C. resident and you rented the house to somebody, then it’s not your primary dwelling, it’s your secondary dwelling, then you’re not subject to the speculation tax,” Cumming explained.

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“There’s a huge number of those that will go away as soon as you start to eliminate that. The actual number that might be potentially [taxed] is unknown.”

Cumming added there are a number of aspects that would make a home fall under the tax, including being left empty and homes where the owner does not reside in B.C., and he suspected most of the houses in Vernon are rented.

The report to council stated that some properties of concern may not be affected by the tax due to the strata exemption, including the Outback Resort, the Strand Lakeside Resort, and Predator Ridge Resort, but those exceptions were not certain.

“We’re still working through what the qualifications may be and how management structures will impact this,” John Perrott, Vernon’s Manager of Economic Development and Tourism, told council during Monday’s meeting.

“Staff are still trying to assess how this could work and what the impacts will be.”

Cumming told Vernon Matters more work needed to be done to confirm details on exemptions.

“Our best guess is [just] that, like the condominiums at Predator Ridge and others, which are designed for short term ownership and short term rentals, so we’ll see. We’ll be asking that exact question,” Cumming said.

“Same thing with the Outback. Outback was the same kind of thing where people rent it for very short periods of time, [rented out for] 128 days, et cetera. So there’s some pieces in this that we’ve got to get clearer.”

Also during the meeting, Councillor Kari Gares asked for “concrete” definitions from the province on the exemptions so property owners could be informed of the policies that would affect them.

Councillor Brian Quiring asked for more information on the term “satellite family” in the legislation, as it represents a person whose foreign income is greater than the amount they earn in Canada, but wondered if that would apply to semi-retired people who are Canadian citizens and live in the Okanagan but own companies overseas.

With the report received, Mayor Cumming can now write a letter on behalf of the city to the Ministry of Housing to express concerns with being included in the expansion of the tax and the impact it could have on tourism, as well as seek further information and clarity on exemptions.

“Clearly, parts of Vernon have been developed for tourists and, if they were complete separate tourism municipalities, then this [tax] would not apply,” Cumming told Vernon Matters.

“So I will be speaking to the minister and others, saying ‘we need the same application of the same logic on pieces of Vernon,’ like Predator Ridge Resort, that was set up as a resort community. Outback would be another one, these are good examples where they were set up specifically to do this and we had the zoning to do this and the building all followed the zoning. These ones don’t fit with the broad brush of the legislation from our opinion, the City of Vernon’s opinion.”