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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

We don't have implementation of the bill yet, just the budget line. Obviously the government knows about this problem, so if they take measures to prevent it, then we'll know they are actually serious.

Note that a corporation is not consequence free. An owner occupied home pays no tax on capital gains. A corporation owned one is double taxed.

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The typical workaround in UK is that instead of selling the house, the corporation that directly or or directly owns it is sold instead, usually on a tax haven.

UK property prices surged a lot in the past year, especially in smaller cities. I wonder if the UK government is going to do something about it

My guess would be yes. They will pour more fuel on to the fire...

the only solution is to take away home owners rights to contest planning permissions and massively overhaul planning.

they tried doing this with wind turbines and it was shelved the next day because nimby’s didn’t want wind turbines.

> The typical workaround in UK is that instead of selling the house, the corporation that directly or or directly owns it is sold instead, usually on a tax haven.

Couldn't that be addressed by regulating based on the beneficiary owners, rather than whatever legal entity is the technical owner, and having onerous penalties (e.g. forfeiture) if the beneficiary owner is misreported or obscured?

The British Columbian government is working on a Beneficial Owners Registry that would attempt to address this issue, though there was a recent article that suggested the registry was struggling to get set up. It's a tough problem.

> government knows about this problem, so if they take measures to prevent it

As a casual watcher of Yes, (Prime) Minister I'm sure they will take measures to get some votes but not solve the problem. The sweet spot is the point where you can gather most vote with a measure that causes as little change to the existing problem as possible.

> A corporation owned one is double taxed.

Are the corporations buying for capital gain or for rental income?

I think if the corporations/foreigners but to rent, this is OK--the house is on the rental market and doesn't sit empty.

The problem arises if ppl park money in the real estate and the units are empty: - This is often "luxury" housing which prevents a more regular buyer/renter-friendly housing units to be built.

Another problem is that some units are converted to airbnbs, and they start to compete on the hotel/business/vacation short-term rental market instead of being rent out for long term for people who live/work in the area.

I'm based in the EU, and this is what I've seen in some of the cities/neighborhoods here. I know very little about Canada's real estate market.

In Poland another phenomenon (not sure how widespread outside of PL) is that ppl buy large-ish apartments and split them into multiple rooms or studios and rent them out to students or ppl early in their career. This inflates prices (as the capital that would have been invested in the stock market goes to housing), but otherwise the number of units increases, so probably less of an issue in the grand scheme of things.

> A corporation owned one is double taxed.

this statement only matters for the current conversation if taxes raised through this mechanism helped maintain property price levels where the taxes are being raised.

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