This may not shock readers at all. It may even trigger the thought: “Great! Why didn’t we think of that? Let’s do it!”
You decide. I’ve used up all my opinion juices for the month. Well, maybe there’s still a tad in the tank.
Agent 5TR45w, no apprentice in life and lore, states that a high-profile West Vancouver professional couple – call them the Upwith-Joneses – are enrolled in B.C.’s residential property tax deferral program.
Though there’s a maze of bureaucratic procedure to claw through, the core idea is simple. If you own your residence and are 55 or over, you can defer your property taxes (as can certain younger homeowners). The provincial government pays them. It clears off the “loan” if you choose to pay it back, or sell the property, or die.
Of course this comes with a cost. You are charged interest on the deferred amount: 1.45 per cent. Such a deal!
But the program raises what some may feel are troubling questions. Writing in this paper in 2016, columnist Tom Carney noted that more land-rich but income-poor seniors were deferring taxes to help adult children buy a first home. Good. Perfectly fair. But Carney added: Since the program isn’t income-tested, “some high net-worth taxpayers are using the deferment as a tax loophole.”
And other people would call that a shameless exploitation of a desirable, well-intentioned program.
Would the affluent Upwith-Joneses be embarrassed, their public respect damaged, if this were known? And what if everyone eligible did likewise?
Judge them – or join them?
• • •
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Neat little aphorism I just made up.
The fire that began Sunday north of Horseshoe Bay, Coastal Fire Centre information officer Donna MacPherson reassuringly stated, was “relatively small.” A little more than four hectares. In acres, which I’m grateful the real estate people still use, about 10.4.
By Monday morning fire information officer Marg Drysdale said the fire was just “smoking ground.” Radio news called it “100 per cent contained.” More reassurance.
But “contained” doesn’t mean out.
When summer giddily rolls around and the needle on the Tiddlycove fire station’s fire hazard display disc creeps up from winter’s low to unsettlingly high, many West Vancouverites must privately feel a tad (an immeasurably small portion of a hectare) uneasy. Don’t tempt the fates by talking about it, sort of thing.
Years ago I awoke one morning to pungent smoke, the sound of crackling flames – and summoned up speed like in the days when, as classmate Anne Wingfield divulged 50 years later, girls called me Daddy Longlegs.
Three small kids to wake up and a mom to throw clothes on them. Two dogs not even dressed in collars. By the time we got outside, tall trees (does the North Shore grow any other kind?) in a large property down the street were flaming like Canada Day rockets that somehow couldn’t take off. If one reached the road and tottered over to a tree on our side…
The Tiddlycove firefighters arrived. You could sense the neighbours’ gratitude that the station was five minutes away. All over in what seemed like a minute. Whatever firefighters are paid, never too much.
No, there are no “small” forest fires on our shores.
• • •
Celebrate. If you can’t uncork the bubbly, unscrew the Chilean wine. Our household likes it just fine.
Two weeks ago today your family, if it’s spot-on average, had paid all your taxes for 2019. The rest of the year, your money is all yours.
The Fraser Institute has calculated Tax Freedom Day for many years (it was a day later last year). The liberal economics organization, weirdly called conservative by those who can’t get enough government and think measures to contain public budgets and debt are a capitalist plot, declared that the average Canadian family will earn $117,731 this year and pay 44.7 per cent of it – $52,675 – for federal, provincial, local and other taxes.
That high gross income figure surprises me. But then so does my Fortis bill.
Varying because of provincial taxes, Tax Freedom Day in 2019 falls latest in Newfoundland and Labrador (July 2) and earliest in Alberta (May 27). In B.C. it fell on June 10.
What wasn’t mentioned in this context is a much graver statistic: For every dollar of disposable (after-tax) income, the average Canadian household spends around $1.70 – i.e., runs a tab.
The thrifty dullards who live below their means, the ballast of society? Eventually their and everyone else’s paper money will be worthless, and they won’t even have had any fun. Maybe not even have swilled cheap Chilean red.
• • •
Bumbling, stumbling, and now “genocidal.”
Canada – still a good place to live, despite the strenuous efforts of its fatuous prime minister and the Higher Purpose People.
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