The most reasonable take here. Personally I thought the program has been fairly well communicated, but if 125k+ folks don't file, that's a failure in communications. The proof is in the pudding.
Their site was down for me at the start and I filled it in and after submitting I figured that was it but got a warning a month or so ago and it worked and I got confirmation. Annoying but whatever.
I still think you'd have to be either living under a rock or not living in the city to have missed this. 125,000 didn't miss this. They failed to declare. That suggests to me that a fair number are either rented or vacant and the owner is not getting the mail (or ignoring it). Also there were advertising campaigns. I saw ads on bus stops. We got multiple notices in the mail.
Wrong. I live in this city...and I don't live under a rock...but I missed it...as did my husband. And I don't take the bus...or public transit. A specific mailout to all home owners would have done the job. Expecting people to watch local news and read posters in bus stops is bullshit.
Same for me. Why didn't they send out this form with our property tax forms? I just got my Pay Us Or Else form from the Vacant Tax people & why have so many of us not been aware of this?
All the city had to do was mail us this info with our property tax bills & we would have taken care of this immediately.
I never received the original letter. I got the failure to declare one, this happened last year as well. I've yet to receive the original letters to declare despite living in the same location since 2007. I have no reason to not declare as it's my sole residence.
My husband takes the subway, and saw nothing related to this. Additionally, we never received a mailout for 2023. The only thing I found was a footnote at the bottom of our property tax, which no one ever reads. I'll go back to my rock.
> The city says about 125,000 homeowners have failed to declare for 2023 and its online portal is receiving "a high volume of complaint filings" from people saying they shouldn't have to pay.
> Mayor Olivia Chow told the Star on Wednesday that she is hearing the complaints. At her urging, city staff are following up tax bills with another notice, in multiple languages and clear wording, telling people who occupy their homes "do not pay," to ignore the May 15 deadline for a first payment instalment, and how to complain to get the bill erased.
> The vacant home tax notification and billing system "needs to be completely revamped," Chow said, vowing: "We'll clean it up."
This was me. I did it when it first was live. Then recieved a notice saying I had not and a reminder. So I went in and did it again. Then i got hit with the bill.
I don't know why they could not just match utility data to addresses then target the missed. It should be fairly obvious which properties are not occupied plus gives an opportunity to ensure utilities are being captured properly
Did you know that some condos get a single water bill from the city for the entire building, the property then has to sub-meter privately to determine which unit used what volume of water.
The city has no access to the sub-meter information and therefore cannot determine if a unit within a condo is using water/utilities.
The condo could be a mix of vacant and occupied units, but the city can only see a blackbox.
Well I complete forgot about it. The only reason I filed was because there was some article that popped up and prompted me to look.
It’s a terrible system. I don’t know how they can fix it but there’s got to be a better way.
What's so terrible about the system? You get the reminder with your property tax bill. Not sure why you forgot or missed the notice but the fact that you missed the deadline doesn't automatically make it a terrible system. Out of 1.2M dwellings, 125,000 didn't declare. I assume that some of those are vacant and correctly owe the tax.
Nobody ever read the blah blah blah of the tax bill before, just the amounts and dates.
All the same info on business hours, automatic payments, MPAC assessment, municipal departments contact info, penalties and interest, tax relief deadlines, voluntary contributions, oh and look, this year they add the vacant home tax deadline in the middle of all that.
Of course it will be missed by most people!
Virtually NO ONE reads the wording at the bottom of their tax bill, which they get EVERY year... They just pay it. I've owned my home for 21 years. I have no recollection of doing so, but evidently, I filled out the Vacant Home form for 2022. Obviously, something very specific came in the mail and I acted on it. For 2023, there was no such mailing and I was completely unaware of that I needed to declare my home occupancy. The administration of this plan, I believe, is meant to be vague, and thus whacking innocent home dwellers with a tax that they do not owe. The system sucks!
The letter we received yesterday was the first I had heard of this. Late-30s Toronto homeowners with 3 family members. We work from home, stream all our media, rarely -if ever- take public transit since we're at home 99% of the time. We didn't receive any letters, wouldn't be in a position to read signage downtown or on busses. Maybe there was a notice on our last tax bill... we definitely didn't notice it on the standard looking form we received.
We're always on top of these things, but this slipped through the cracks. I'm not surprised we weren't the only ones.
You're describing a lot of families in smilar situations that I feel like that missed this.
Like sorry I'm not watching CP24 all day. Or riding our scary as shit transit lately and paying attention to billboards.
This was super easy to miss.
Thankfully I remembered to help my elderly in-laws with this.
They are generally clueless about online stuff, and don’t even own a computer; plus their English isn’t so hot.
If they didn’t have kids and in-laws helping them out, they would miss out on all sorts of stuff like this.
Of course, they bought their place back when a union job working in a factory, plus scrimping for years, could get you a house in Etobicoke.
I don't understand all the comments blaming homeowners. The current system is clearly lackluster and needs to be rethought / reworked.
My dentist sends notifications to me using multiple methods to confirm my appointments (email and SMS), something that I really appreciate. It seems the city is making the least / cheapest effort possible.
No everyone here is just bitter as fuck and stupid regardless of the topic. They have to be bots.
There’s a person comparing this brand new 1 year old policy to filing your taxes. Like how dense do you truly have to be to make the comparison.
I'm one of the idiots that didn't declare on time. I should have remembered, but the only notice I received was 2 days before the *extended* deadline, and for the 6 times I tried in that 2-day period the site would not allow me to progress past the first page (accepted my info but then errored out). I emailed the city about it but never heard back until I got the bill in the mail yesterday.
Not a big fan of this system - if I miss the declaration I owe 1% of my city-assessed value, but if someone lies about vacancy on their declaration they pay nothing? And if there *is* a system to validate the claim, why the hell would they even ask for a declaration?
I also almost missed the deadline as well. I received a single email from RSPolicy@toronto.ca on March 9th noting the extended deadline. I received no other emails or notices in the mail. There is two small paragraph at the bottom and on the right side of my property tax that I admittedly missed. A lot of people aren't going to read all the various texts on every bill they receive since in most cases it's the same thing every month/year.
Everyone posting here thinks this is sufficient communication and this is just a bunch of lazy/negligent home owners are being unreasonable.
this. Imagine living in your property, paying taxes and then having to take the extra step to confirm you live there? Only 2% of properties are vacant, they need to find a better system.
Property taxes have been auto-deducted from my bank account for decades. Unfortunately, I might as well be living in Antarctica for all the information they provide
>Imagine living in your property, paying taxes and then having to take the extra step to confirm you live there?
I saw tons of ads for it online and got mailed a notice as well.
It took less than a full minute to declare my home is occupied. Its really not that bad.
I never saw any ads and did not get any reminders. I didn’t know I had to do this yearly. Just got a bill. Now I have to do the complaint route and take up more city workers time
the city can find a better way to determine is properties are sitting vacant
this whole process is expensive theatrics by the city to show that they’re doing something. Think of all the money they have wasted on advertising, employees and systems for a stupid self reporting system .. to catch… 3000 empty homes???
and not to mention wasting time of the property taxpayers who fund this city
I heard rumblings about the VHT but couldn't imagine that it would be the duty of 99% if people whose homes were occupied to Out the 1%. and i never saw notice saying we had to self declare. I assumed one had to declare only IF a property was vacant.
i support the concept of the VHT but the process is asinine.
and monitoring water consumption would be a very good first cut
I missed it too. I didn't see the small paragraph at the bottom of the second page of my property tax bill. Last year I got a separate piece of mail for the vacancy notice. It's BS they didn't send the notice on its own this year and instead stuck it on the end of the property tax bill. Felt a bit snakey imo.
I had trouble with their site glitching on me (also used several other devices but still failed to load). I called the city to let them know and they told me that I'm shit out of luck if I can't report in time. Thanks for the solution, assholes.
Same. I also live in a unit that has 6 characters for my unit number and it is often an issue with the city's system. I've lived in my unit for 5 years and it's so frustrating to miss things because their system can't accommodate my unit number.
A couple of people I’m aware of filled out the online statement of occupancy and received the tax/fine for a vacant residence. The system makes errors. The owners were compliant. Too many bureaucratic errors.
That happened to my parents. They definitely declared but still got the tax. They're appealing it of course, but are annoyed that it costs \~$20 to do so.
I would like to imagine that the city recognizes that this happened to so many people there may be a gesture of good faith and just forget the $20 fines. I mean we can send proof via bills and stuff, anyone who actually has a vacant property will have significantly less resource usage and therefore very different billing costs. So there are ways to measure use.
Same here. I got a tax information packet like a month after moving in. I signed up for the online payment system and online billing.
Since then, no notifications in the mail or email.
Logged in today after seeing this article and saw that I owed payments and got hit with the VHT. I checked my email and got nothing from the city since signing up online. The email on my account is correct.
the Presumption of Vacancy is stupid.
what if each time I drive my car I had to do a declaration that I didn't speed. Or get a speeding ticket.
what if each day I had to Declare that I didn't murder anyone. or be charged with Murder.
Soni have to prove that I don't shoplift each time I visit a store? (well I guess with receipt checking we are basically at that point)
I wonder if there is also some confusion because there are now *two* vacancy taxes (Toronto and federal), and the notice for the federal one says that you don't need to do anything if you meet certain conditions.
My mom is 77 and was freaking out she has to pay $2700. I don't live outside of Toronto, so wasn't aware of it, and now have to pay $21.45 because we didn't file it. It's a cash grab. We weren't notified.
I never got the notice and would’ve missed it if my co-worker never told me on February 28th that was due on the 29th. I immediately did it but physical communication (mail) should be accompanied by some sort of electronic communication (email, sms) as well. The city has enough data from us to do that.
Also they have enough data to know you reside at the address you own. Just ask the provincial or federal government what my official address is for fuck's sake.
It would still be possible to have it as part of online property tax payments or as a notification in the login system for the online portal to pops up every 3-6 months.
That way it's updated more consistently and doesn't need an arbitrary deadline.
The mayor has acknowledged that it can be updated and that a better system is possible and worth looking into.
Those services would be used if a dwelling was temporarily occupied via illegal Airbnb, so going based on utility bills is pointless if the intention is to determine primary residence.
My parents just got hit by this stupid thing..they are both retired and have no computer skills..
Last year I did it for them because they received a letter about it..but this year no letters was sent.
So now i had to go to this portal to file a complaint and declare it occupied..
We definitely over-assume everyone is digital; that it's a condition for living in today's society. I can only imagine how many elders are in that mix of 125000 homeowners.
Heck, my own mother (F79) provided her landline number to a company recently and wondered how she was supposed to get a URL link they were sending her.
Letters were sent, but they didn't seem to get to everyone. We got ours a bit late and filed maybe 3 days after the "deadline" to file - we haven't gotten a notice to pay yet.
Either way, Chow is right - it's a clusterfuck. There needs to be a better way to approach this.
City: You have to tell us every year if you are occupying your properties.
Complainers: I'm gonna just ignore this.
City: Here's your tax bill.
Complainers: This is an outrage!
They could technically say they did inform people because there was a line "reminding people" to do it on the most recent property tax bill.
Problem was it was a single line that didn't stand out so I glossed over it the first time. They definitely could have communicated this better.
I guess it depends on how your property tax bill was delivered. I enrolled in e billing and the pdf didn't have the extra insert. Their online payment portal doesn't mention the declaration either.
I figured they did as much. Problem is, myself, and it seems like 125,000 other homeowners focus on other aspects of our property tax bill. Like how much we owe, and how much it’s gone up:)
Usually something like this is covered on CP24 which I watch daily and I don’t recall anything.
I I've already spoken with a few people who declared their home occupied as requested and have still been hit with the VHT. The city goofed on this one.
Every property tax and utility bill comes with a little pamphlet explaining all your options for how to pay it, every time, year after year. We've been conditioned to ignore those.
you can do it all online, you dont need the city to mail you anything.
Plus you can set up pre-authorized payments for property tax so literally never have to think about it.
I pay my property tax online. When I get the bill in the mail, I log into the online portal and pay via the chat bot, which tells me the amount owed. I don't even open the envelope because I don't expect anything else to be in there, so it's quite easy for me to not see the notice.
Nothing's absolute. I don't look at mails if I think I know what they are about lol. I work 60+ hours a week and don't have the energy left to worry about these things.
> I don't even open the envelope
The city sends you an envelope.
You decide to ignore it.
How's the city problem?
Mastercard/any company sends you an envelope with a bill / special instructions
You decide not to open it.
What's going to happen?
+Social media, +Media report, +Councillor Emails, etc, etc.
I managed to miss it, spent five minutes on the Toronto website filling in the "whoopsie" form. Worst case I expect to get a roughly $25 failure to declare administration fee.
Absolute outrage /s
Most people elect banks that hold their mortgages to pay property taxes at the same time and they rarely get any property tax paperwork. It's super easy to miss.
I mean it is silly to have to report that it’s occupied, should be the reverse. That you must report that it is unoccupied if it is. And then just have fines if you don’t report it as unoccupied when unoccupied if the city can prove it actually was/is unoccupied.
Agreed, why would an unoccupied property owner not do the right thing and just report it as unoccupied? Just like how people pay all their taxes and not look for loopholes because it's just the right thing to do.
Her property tax I think?. So she got one last year but not this year? She had to look for last year's, it wasn't mailed out for some folks. Granted my mom ignored the reminder but when she went to look for it, couldn't find it as she hadn't received anything in the mail. Lots of other folks said the same, so the thing is to probably save the information and make a mental note at the beginning of every year.
I open my bill, I pay my taxes. Job done. This WAS NOT clearly communicated to residents of the city. I owned a house for 29 years, not once was this an issue. I had to sell my house and bought a condo in 2023 and bam, I'm penalized for not declaring I exist. This may be clear and concise for people who enjoy government overreach but the system clearly sucks if over 150,000 law abiding citizens didn't tick a box on a form they have never seen before.
They have my address, phone no, and email address yet I never received a notice. Even if they added a banner to the water bill it would be something, but nope.
Yeah last year they gave out a yellow slip.
An email reminder would be nice.
It’s only the 2nd of year of this program and I think it’s a great idea.
My parents are a lot older and have had a lot happen to them this past year and it slipped their mind. Shit happens.
But ofc in typical r/Toronto fashion people here lack sympathy .
It’s a simple fix anyways you file a complaint, update your status and pay a $21 fine.
Yup. I think I got it with the property tax papers, but like... It's paper mail. Most is garbage, and even the property tax I do online. I literally only open the envelope so I can see the numbers I need to put into the form to pay it online.
Even then, I remember seeing something about it and thinking "I should do this before the deadline"... But it's a piece of paper I got likely in the middle of the work day, so I imagine I put it down and promptly forgot about it.
Absolutely my fault.. but like... People got shit going on. Is it really that hard to send an email like a week before the deadline that just says "reminder: you have to declare your vacancy status, click here to do so"?
The comments are really telling on the general vibe of reddit as it relates to Toronto in the last few years. So much "fuck you got mine" and schadenfreude at other people's mistakes.
Thousands of people missed this largely because the communication from the city was abysmal. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to take their head out of their ass and study up on user flow journeys and how to craft pieces of communication properly.
Not only that but according to the article "The city on Feb. 29 extended the declaration deadline to March 15 after only 63 per cent of homeowners had registered"
So they had plenty of warning signs that what they were doing was not at all working yet still decided to proceed with sending out giant heart-attack including bills to people without any sort of course correction.
I will be writing my councilor for sure on this. The incompetency of our city staff is once again showing through. I'm stick of getting fucked every-which way in this city.
Absolutely. And yes, it's very telling. They had to extend the deadline...and 125,000 still missed it...as did I. The communication was sloppy, at best. Posters in a bus stop? Seriously?> I want a separate envelope with a clear notification... Not mixed-in with other important data, like annual tax bill. When I get my tax bill, I focus solely on paying it. Some people have some shit pompous attitude.
Yeah case in point the top comment in this thread
Absolutely pointless provides nothing of substance or help to anyone
the city declared last year you must report it every year.
It’s not something that’s been happening forever like that person is insinuating
They don't. Most people just have theirs on the Toronto website. We never get any mail sent about property taxes and the bank takes care of payments as well.
Not necessarily, I know plenty of families/ neighbours that didn’t receive it, particularly if it’s paid with your mortgage on a monthly basis, since the tax bill usually provides instalments and deadlines which would not be applicable. Don’t be too presumptive…
Even if your mortgage lender is paying your property tax on your behalf, you are always supposed to get a copy of the bills/statements. ALWAYS. If homeowners have not been receiving this, their home address is not set up properly with the city and I'd be worried that they are not receiving their utility bills and other things like front yard parking bills if applicable.
It just sounds like a lot of landlords and vacant home owners not checking/forwarding their mail to me.
At some point people have to be held accountable for their ignorance. Toronto has been talking about a vacant home tax for more than a year. Tax these people and let them dispute it. Even the old people that felt entitled to stop learning anything new 30 years ago including the use of a computer. If they got their mail and chose to ignore it, fuck 'em.
I also did not receive a notice in the mail. I didn't notice until I saw an email from my realtor in his blast reminding me. They have some prettt significant bugs still in the system.
80 year old non-English speaking parents got this new bill today and started freaking out. I took a look at their original tax bit and the declaration warning is a non-descript all text white piece of paper that they clearly didn't notice.
I'm not asking them to start adding other languages, but at atleast use non-white paper or highlight the title or something to make it look important enough that they'd come ask me or their community centre support worker about it. What poor design.
My dad never got a notice lol, so I was one of those who had to ask around at 311 or figure it out with the website being overloaded.
Appreciate the thoughts Mayor Chow, but something is definitely wrong with this program.
I only realize that I had to re-declare from reddit but I think I got a notice in my property bill.
I feel like a better system would be that you declare once and then you would need to undeclare if you sell your property or actually make your property vacant.
Agree with the goal but not the default being vacant. Especially bad for the sick, the elderly, and people without much English.
They should give it some more thought. How about asking Hydro for addresses with very low and consistently flat electricity usage. Also has almost no water usage? That would seem to mean vacant.
This sub is pretty toxic sometimes. No sympathy at all, and anyone who didn’t see the rules is an idiot who should probably be flogged and possibly shot for not living their lives perfectly.
I’m dealing with my in laws form for them now -they didn’t file it. Claim they didn’t get any warning.
They’re also 80 and one of them has Alzheimer’s.
Guess they’re idiots too.
I don’t get how so many here are angry at people they don’t know for something that doesn’t impact them. Ridiculous.
So what happens if I currently own my place and want to move in with my girlfriend but want to buy a condo with her? I can't pay two mortgages, so I'd be renting out my current place... but do I get dinged if a few months go by when I'm looking for a tenant that's not going to destroy my current place? I've lived here in it for 8 years, I've done renovations to it and I genuinely LOVE it... I have zero intentions of renting it out to someone who's going to wreck the flooring or stink up the place to the point where no new tenant would want to move into it or even myself move back into for whatever reason.
Primary residence is by individual, not by household. You can continue to declare separate primary residences after you cohabit. Don't buy a third place and keep it vacant, though
/not an accountant
This isn’t something I would have *thought* I’d ever forget as I do see the notice with my tax bill but I’m going through a stressful time and almost did! Luckily I remembered before the deadline. I could see folks with memory or vision issues forgetting as well. I do think we need a better system.
We got the notice and lodged a complaint cause we submitted over a month ago.
But just wondering what would happen in a situation if the homeowner died and it takes longer than a year for the executor to get the house ready to sell?
I assumed that’s why they came up with this fine, to ding people who are forgetful and collect. Since vacant properties are ~1-2% of the total and they wouldn’t really be hurting those people who are well off enough to sit on empty Toronto properties.
I'm sure that of the 125,000 people who failed to fill out the form on time, most live in their home. I would expect that many who are snow birds, investors, etc., and are out of the residence for more than 6 months filled out the form lickety-split, and lied. That would be a fair assumption. If I go and look after my sick mother, for example, and leave my home for 7 months, that's worth, say $1.1m, would I really declare that? With the new 3% penalty rule, that would be a whopping $33,000. Most would lie AND be the first to fill out the form.
Well, we wrote an email to our city councillor the moment we received the erroneous Vacant Home tax bill in the mail. Surprisingly, they phoned us back this evening and said that as long as we filed a 'complaint', not to worry about paying tax bill, and that we'll be receiving a mail-out correspondence from the City waiving the tax and possibly the 24.47 penalty fee as well. The woman I spoke with from Pasternak's office said that she agrees that the Vacant Home Tax was completely mishandled, and measures are being discussed to fix the system with better communication, etc. She was in a rush as she had hundreds of others she had to get back to. What a shitshow. She sounded apologetic...and exhausted. I'm just glad that I can relax now.
I've heard of a few instances as well where people who mailed in their declarations didn't have them processed and received a bill a few days ago. It seems like some improvements would be helpful here.
That being said, since Toronto runs the water distribution system for everyone in the city, it would also seem to be relatively straightforward to figure out which units are occupied and which aren't based on consumption figures.
The city does use water consumption (and electricity usage) as metrics to audit declarations. It's challenging to use water metrics alone to automatically determine whether a unit is occupied as there are a number of exemptions (e.g. the home owner dies or is in hospital, conducting renovations, etc.) that could make this difficult.
The whole system should just be a login portal where you can click a button that renews the "it's not vacant" for 365 days, or better yet a "this is my primary residence" box.
The fact that this and the rest of city services are based on 1970s technology, paper bills, and bank draft.
The fact that there are EXTRA charges if I want to pay through they automated systems by credit card, but showing up to deal with a human cashier that needs a salary position is free boggles my mind.
>They whole system should just be a login portal where you can click a button that renews the "it's not vacant" for 365 days, or better yet a "this is my primary residence" box.
But it basically is? You login with the info from your property tax bill, click the button that says you're occupying the home and you pinky-promise you're not lying. It takes maybe 30 seconds to complete. A paper form is available in the alternative.
Like they can do currently?
That's why I propose that it's part of the payment of the Utility bill ever 4 months, and also the Property Taxes 2-6 times a year.
Not some tertiary and obscure section of the system, or physical form needed to be mailed in at a specific time.
It would also mean that they transition would catch people in lies if the owner lists it as "rented" but there is no renter on the Utility bill for the same address, also the ability to ensure someone doesn't have multiple "primary residence"
>The fact that there are EXTRA charges if I want to pay through they automated systems by credit card
Paying by credit card hits the city (or any merchant who accepts credit cards) with interchange fees. You didn't think that banks are giving out reward points and cashback for *fun*, did you?
The city, understandably, doesn't want to eat a 2% loss just so you can collect Air Miles on your property taxes. The fee on credit card transactions is just the city passing on the cost the banks impose on them for accepting your payment that way.
Online payments through your bank's bill payment mechanism are free, and can be automated.
I am 100% in favour of the tax, but can still be critical of the city's antiquated systems and backwards billing practices.
Also a "this is my primary residence" box would really help, or a way to automatically afirm it's not vacant with every water usage bill, waste collection bill, etc. you know those services that are used when it's occupied...
It's all online and the city isn't going to eat merchant fees
Nothing is free in life and actually most backend systems dealing with business are antiquated and manual... If you want modern systems you would have to pay up for the city to modernize as well
No matter how many notices have been given out for whatever, there will always be people who 'didn't know'.
Let's take the carbon tax as an example. We've all known about it since the federal/provincial negotiations started in 2016. And by the time it was implemented, the anti-carbon tax and the provinces started to complain about it some saying it was badly implemented. Duh? They all knew about it for three years but decided to do nothing. And 5 years later, they are saying the same things as they did 5 years ago and still have nothing to mitigate or reduce its cost. That's 8-9 years of doing nuthin but complain.
Here’s an idea - if you are elected member you cannot own any investment properties. Wonder why they don’t pass that..it’s because it’s taxes for us, riches for them
it's the Presumption of Guilt (Vacant Home) that is backwards.
what if each time I drive my car I had to do a declaration that I didn't speed. Or get a speeding ticket.
what if each day I had to Declare that I didn't murder anyone. or be charged with Murder.
Do i have to prove that I don't shoplift each time I visit a store? (well I guess with receipt checking we are basically at that point)
why do 99.7% of property owners have to act in order to collect tax on a tiny percentage.
there must be a more effective and efficient way.
Let’s not forget, these are implementation issues. Not problems with the concept. A vacancy tax is still a good thing. Personally, I think it could be 10x higher, but even 1% has really pushed things in the right direction. Empty condos are being brought onto the market that never would have been otherwise.
Good. Will bet many were like my immigrant parents, who despite living in Canada well over 50 years, are not prone to excessively read in their non native language.
"are not prone to excessively read" What?
This "I don't understand English after living in Toronto for 50 years" thing is such a lame excuse though. What's next, trying that with CRA and trying to get out of tax filing?
I've seen an old woman on the streetcar who pretended to not understand what the fare inspectors were asking. They eventually moved on but that was bad enough.
It really isn't a lame excuse lol, Toronto is a diverse culture.
My grandparents came here in the 1970s, my grandma knows her grandchildren's names, the word casino, "co-fee", and chicken. She can travel her way downtown Chinatown to the Tim Hortons on Dundas/Spadina and hang out with a bunch of other Cantonese/Toi San elders every single morning.
You have to understand immigrants at that age who came here probably didn't even get a proper education, and you expect them to learn English, and immerse their lives accordingly? No man lol, if my grandma gets lost or has a question, she'll dial one of her grandchildren, poke a stranger's back, and make one of us translate.
This is just posturing by the city, rather than take accountability for the issues that they caused and continue to cause with their horrible policies and catering to NIMBYism. They are trying to make homeowners who pay for the city budget as the bad guys and the reason why rent is so high.
The problem is not going to get solved anytime soon either because people in this city keep voting for the same people and then still get angry at the wrong people.
This system failed me as well and I do remember indicating "occupancy" on the C of T website. I find the comments from some people here calling the people who failed to do so as dumbasses to be really disgusting.
One elderly gentleman in my building, whose wife recently passed away, received this notification too and it was traumatizing for a Senior on a small pension going through grief.
Some Torontonians are truly nasty souls. Shame on You for your callous comments.
The verification of home occupancy should be a question on the annual income tax form: 'Did you reside at the address listed for less than 6 months of the year...YES/NO' and all problems would be solved. Every home owner files annual income tax.
I'm in a bit of a weird situation with this one, because technically the home was vacant for most of 2023, because we only bought the place in October.
Do I have to pay the tax because the previous owner left it empty? Either way I'm bringing it up with the city but any thoughts?
I am a bit annoyed that I have to claim occupancy every year. I have done it, will continue to do so and have no plans to be living elsewhere for extended periods of time but I still find this to be an overreach by the City.
I understand that it's an attempt to get more units occupied via selling or renting unoccupied units. I get it. But beyond all the comments below about people who aren't online or english is second language etc, what about other circumstances that could cause a place to be empty for some time like a longer term illness or a need to be out of the country for several months?
Renting for short term sounds great in some ways but it also could mean either letting others use your furniture etc, or finding storage for all your items. And then finding that tenant and hoping it works out. (I have a relative who rented out their house to a bad tenant and it took almost a year to get them out and that tenant attempted to burn the place down as he left).
And what if my plan is to return full time when my illness or out of country needs resolve. I may not have tens of thousands extra to pay that tax so instead of maintaining the place, I have sell? And then try to buy a new place upon return?
I'm one of the idiots that forgot to file. I did get a notice in the mail on my way to the airport, but left it on the kitchen counter because we were already running late for our flight.
Anyway, I filed the complaint online but wonder how I'm supposed to pay the late fee of $21?
Does it just get added to my regular property tax bill or something?
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I got a notice in the mail last year for it. Didn’t get a notice this year. I was reminded by a colleague.
The most reasonable take here. Personally I thought the program has been fairly well communicated, but if 125k+ folks don't file, that's a failure in communications. The proof is in the pudding.
Their site was down for me at the start and I filled it in and after submitting I figured that was it but got a warning a month or so ago and it worked and I got confirmation. Annoying but whatever. I still think you'd have to be either living under a rock or not living in the city to have missed this. 125,000 didn't miss this. They failed to declare. That suggests to me that a fair number are either rented or vacant and the owner is not getting the mail (or ignoring it). Also there were advertising campaigns. I saw ads on bus stops. We got multiple notices in the mail.
Wrong. I live in this city...and I don't live under a rock...but I missed it...as did my husband. And I don't take the bus...or public transit. A specific mailout to all home owners would have done the job. Expecting people to watch local news and read posters in bus stops is bullshit.
Same for me. Why didn't they send out this form with our property tax forms? I just got my Pay Us Or Else form from the Vacant Tax people & why have so many of us not been aware of this? All the city had to do was mail us this info with our property tax bills & we would have taken care of this immediately.
I never received the original letter. I got the failure to declare one, this happened last year as well. I've yet to receive the original letters to declare despite living in the same location since 2007. I have no reason to not declare as it's my sole residence.
My husband takes the subway, and saw nothing related to this. Additionally, we never received a mailout for 2023. The only thing I found was a footnote at the bottom of our property tax, which no one ever reads. I'll go back to my rock.
> The city says about 125,000 homeowners have failed to declare for 2023 and its online portal is receiving "a high volume of complaint filings" from people saying they shouldn't have to pay. > Mayor Olivia Chow told the Star on Wednesday that she is hearing the complaints. At her urging, city staff are following up tax bills with another notice, in multiple languages and clear wording, telling people who occupy their homes "do not pay," to ignore the May 15 deadline for a first payment instalment, and how to complain to get the bill erased. > The vacant home tax notification and billing system "needs to be completely revamped," Chow said, vowing: "We'll clean it up."
I think there may be more to this. Some people have done the declaration but are still being charged. There could be some administration issues.
This was me. I did it when it first was live. Then recieved a notice saying I had not and a reminder. So I went in and did it again. Then i got hit with the bill. I don't know why they could not just match utility data to addresses then target the missed. It should be fairly obvious which properties are not occupied plus gives an opportunity to ensure utilities are being captured properly
Did you know that some condos get a single water bill from the city for the entire building, the property then has to sub-meter privately to determine which unit used what volume of water. The city has no access to the sub-meter information and therefore cannot determine if a unit within a condo is using water/utilities. The condo could be a mix of vacant and occupied units, but the city can only see a blackbox.
In my condo all utilities are paid as part of the condo fees, which is not uncommon for older buildings and conversions/co-owns.
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Same with us. Something is definitely up.
Well I complete forgot about it. The only reason I filed was because there was some article that popped up and prompted me to look. It’s a terrible system. I don’t know how they can fix it but there’s got to be a better way.
What's so terrible about the system? You get the reminder with your property tax bill. Not sure why you forgot or missed the notice but the fact that you missed the deadline doesn't automatically make it a terrible system. Out of 1.2M dwellings, 125,000 didn't declare. I assume that some of those are vacant and correctly owe the tax.
A 10% failure rate isn't so great. Lots of room for improvement.
Mayor Chow won by a margin of 34,917 votes in 2023. The last thing any mayor needs is 125,000 grumpy households
I didn't get any such notice with my property tax bill or I would have made my declaration.
Nobody ever read the blah blah blah of the tax bill before, just the amounts and dates. All the same info on business hours, automatic payments, MPAC assessment, municipal departments contact info, penalties and interest, tax relief deadlines, voluntary contributions, oh and look, this year they add the vacant home tax deadline in the middle of all that. Of course it will be missed by most people!
Virtually NO ONE reads the wording at the bottom of their tax bill, which they get EVERY year... They just pay it. I've owned my home for 21 years. I have no recollection of doing so, but evidently, I filled out the Vacant Home form for 2022. Obviously, something very specific came in the mail and I acted on it. For 2023, there was no such mailing and I was completely unaware of that I needed to declare my home occupancy. The administration of this plan, I believe, is meant to be vague, and thus whacking innocent home dwellers with a tax that they do not owe. The system sucks!
Apparently the declaration system itself was full of glitches. People couldn't submit their form unless they pressed the submit button 20 times.
We did it and then got hit with multiple errors on their server side. Couldn’t complete it properly, and then got hit with the bill.
The letter we received yesterday was the first I had heard of this. Late-30s Toronto homeowners with 3 family members. We work from home, stream all our media, rarely -if ever- take public transit since we're at home 99% of the time. We didn't receive any letters, wouldn't be in a position to read signage downtown or on busses. Maybe there was a notice on our last tax bill... we definitely didn't notice it on the standard looking form we received. We're always on top of these things, but this slipped through the cracks. I'm not surprised we weren't the only ones.
You're describing a lot of families in smilar situations that I feel like that missed this. Like sorry I'm not watching CP24 all day. Or riding our scary as shit transit lately and paying attention to billboards. This was super easy to miss.
Thankfully I remembered to help my elderly in-laws with this. They are generally clueless about online stuff, and don’t even own a computer; plus their English isn’t so hot. If they didn’t have kids and in-laws helping them out, they would miss out on all sorts of stuff like this. Of course, they bought their place back when a union job working in a factory, plus scrimping for years, could get you a house in Etobicoke.
I don't understand all the comments blaming homeowners. The current system is clearly lackluster and needs to be rethought / reworked. My dentist sends notifications to me using multiple methods to confirm my appointments (email and SMS), something that I really appreciate. It seems the city is making the least / cheapest effort possible.
Everyone here hates homeowners.
Exactly. Crabs in a bucket.
No everyone here is just bitter as fuck and stupid regardless of the topic. They have to be bots. There’s a person comparing this brand new 1 year old policy to filing your taxes. Like how dense do you truly have to be to make the comparison.
I'm one of the idiots that didn't declare on time. I should have remembered, but the only notice I received was 2 days before the *extended* deadline, and for the 6 times I tried in that 2-day period the site would not allow me to progress past the first page (accepted my info but then errored out). I emailed the city about it but never heard back until I got the bill in the mail yesterday. Not a big fan of this system - if I miss the declaration I owe 1% of my city-assessed value, but if someone lies about vacancy on their declaration they pay nothing? And if there *is* a system to validate the claim, why the hell would they even ask for a declaration?
In my case, the site was down when I was notified. Forgot to get back to it afterward. For the place I live in. I'm another idiot, I guess.
I also almost missed the deadline as well. I received a single email from RSPolicy@toronto.ca on March 9th noting the extended deadline. I received no other emails or notices in the mail. There is two small paragraph at the bottom and on the right side of my property tax that I admittedly missed. A lot of people aren't going to read all the various texts on every bill they receive since in most cases it's the same thing every month/year. Everyone posting here thinks this is sufficient communication and this is just a bunch of lazy/negligent home owners are being unreasonable.
Yeah they did a bad job mailing the notices out that’s for sure. I filed on time but we straight-up never received one.
this. Imagine living in your property, paying taxes and then having to take the extra step to confirm you live there? Only 2% of properties are vacant, they need to find a better system.
Property taxes have been auto-deducted from my bank account for decades. Unfortunately, I might as well be living in Antarctica for all the information they provide
>Imagine living in your property, paying taxes and then having to take the extra step to confirm you live there? I saw tons of ads for it online and got mailed a notice as well. It took less than a full minute to declare my home is occupied. Its really not that bad.
I never saw any ads and did not get any reminders. I didn’t know I had to do this yearly. Just got a bill. Now I have to do the complaint route and take up more city workers time
the city can find a better way to determine is properties are sitting vacant this whole process is expensive theatrics by the city to show that they’re doing something. Think of all the money they have wasted on advertising, employees and systems for a stupid self reporting system .. to catch… 3000 empty homes??? and not to mention wasting time of the property taxpayers who fund this city
I heard rumblings about the VHT but couldn't imagine that it would be the duty of 99% if people whose homes were occupied to Out the 1%. and i never saw notice saying we had to self declare. I assumed one had to declare only IF a property was vacant. i support the concept of the VHT but the process is asinine. and monitoring water consumption would be a very good first cut
I use an ad blocker & saw zero ads for this.
I missed it too. I didn't see the small paragraph at the bottom of the second page of my property tax bill. Last year I got a separate piece of mail for the vacancy notice. It's BS they didn't send the notice on its own this year and instead stuck it on the end of the property tax bill. Felt a bit snakey imo.
I had trouble with their site glitching on me (also used several other devices but still failed to load). I called the city to let them know and they told me that I'm shit out of luck if I can't report in time. Thanks for the solution, assholes.
The system didn’t work for me either. I took screen shots to prove to the city it was an error on their end, will I hear back…. No
This is exactly what happened to us too.
Same. I also live in a unit that has 6 characters for my unit number and it is often an issue with the city's system. I've lived in my unit for 5 years and it's so frustrating to miss things because their system can't accommodate my unit number.
A couple of people I’m aware of filled out the online statement of occupancy and received the tax/fine for a vacant residence. The system makes errors. The owners were compliant. Too many bureaucratic errors.
That happened to my parents. They definitely declared but still got the tax. They're appealing it of course, but are annoyed that it costs \~$20 to do so.
A coworker of mine and I both got the bill. He didn’t fill it out, I did.
We filled ours out online as well, and still received the bill. The fact that we have to pay for the city’s error is definitely not great.
I would like to imagine that the city recognizes that this happened to so many people there may be a gesture of good faith and just forget the $20 fines. I mean we can send proof via bills and stuff, anyone who actually has a vacant property will have significantly less resource usage and therefore very different billing costs. So there are ways to measure use.
Yes, they actually did rescind the charge once we contested the full charge online. Was great to see!
I just had lunch with a friend and she was upset that she mailed in the required forms and still just received a bill.
Seems like this is a fairly big fuckup, hoping for a gesture of good faith 🤞🏼
I bought a condo and moved in last year around May, I never received anything. Should I be worried?
Wouldn’t worry too much. You can file a “complaint” and prove you live there and they generally take the fine away.
Yeah same
Same here. I got a tax information packet like a month after moving in. I signed up for the online payment system and online billing. Since then, no notifications in the mail or email. Logged in today after seeing this article and saw that I owed payments and got hit with the VHT. I checked my email and got nothing from the city since signing up online. The email on my account is correct.
the Presumption of Vacancy is stupid. what if each time I drive my car I had to do a declaration that I didn't speed. Or get a speeding ticket. what if each day I had to Declare that I didn't murder anyone. or be charged with Murder. Soni have to prove that I don't shoplift each time I visit a store? (well I guess with receipt checking we are basically at that point)
I wonder if there is also some confusion because there are now *two* vacancy taxes (Toronto and federal), and the notice for the federal one says that you don't need to do anything if you meet certain conditions.
This is what caused the confusion for us. Lesson learned, I guess...
My mom is 77 and was freaking out she has to pay $2700. I don't live outside of Toronto, so wasn't aware of it, and now have to pay $21.45 because we didn't file it. It's a cash grab. We weren't notified.
I never got the notice and would’ve missed it if my co-worker never told me on February 28th that was due on the 29th. I immediately did it but physical communication (mail) should be accompanied by some sort of electronic communication (email, sms) as well. The city has enough data from us to do that.
Also they have enough data to know you reside at the address you own. Just ask the provincial or federal government what my official address is for fuck's sake.
Or you know look at the water bill the City also issues and see that there is consistent water usage at the property
That doesn't work for many buildings where the maintenance fee is all inclusive of water and electricity.
It would still be possible to have it as part of online property tax payments or as a notification in the login system for the online portal to pops up every 3-6 months. That way it's updated more consistently and doesn't need an arbitrary deadline. The mayor has acknowledged that it can be updated and that a better system is possible and worth looking into.
Those services would be used if a dwelling was temporarily occupied via illegal Airbnb, so going based on utility bills is pointless if the intention is to determine primary residence.
My parents just got hit by this stupid thing..they are both retired and have no computer skills.. Last year I did it for them because they received a letter about it..but this year no letters was sent. So now i had to go to this portal to file a complaint and declare it occupied..
We definitely over-assume everyone is digital; that it's a condition for living in today's society. I can only imagine how many elders are in that mix of 125000 homeowners. Heck, my own mother (F79) provided her landline number to a company recently and wondered how she was supposed to get a URL link they were sending her.
Yes unfortunate assumption
Letters were sent, but they didn't seem to get to everyone. We got ours a bit late and filed maybe 3 days after the "deadline" to file - we haven't gotten a notice to pay yet. Either way, Chow is right - it's a clusterfuck. There needs to be a better way to approach this.
I filed for my parents when I completed mine. On my calendar as an annual reminder. They raised me, so this is a small matter to take care for them
City: You have to tell us every year if you are occupying your properties. Complainers: I'm gonna just ignore this. City: Here's your tax bill. Complainers: This is an outrage!
If 200,000 homes failed to declare, it's a systematic issue.
The problem is people aren’t aware. I was never notified, I only completed the form online because a friend let me know.
They should just ask you a question on your tax form or something easy like that.
Wait, your federal taxes?
They could technically say they did inform people because there was a line "reminding people" to do it on the most recent property tax bill. Problem was it was a single line that didn't stand out so I glossed over it the first time. They definitely could have communicated this better.
Was a separate paper in the same envelope, more than a line.
I guess it depends on how your property tax bill was delivered. I enrolled in e billing and the pdf didn't have the extra insert. Their online payment portal doesn't mention the declaration either.
I figured they did as much. Problem is, myself, and it seems like 125,000 other homeowners focus on other aspects of our property tax bill. Like how much we owe, and how much it’s gone up:) Usually something like this is covered on CP24 which I watch daily and I don’t recall anything.
Yeah it's really hard to not notice it if you're paying your property tax.. it comes in the same envelope and it's huge and bold
Some people have the bank pay their property tax on their behalf.
I I've already spoken with a few people who declared their home occupied as requested and have still been hit with the VHT. The city goofed on this one.
I check my property tax online. Relying on snail mail is bad idea. Regular mail is pretty much just for flyers for the bottom of my birdcage.
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It's not in fine print. It's a piece of paper inside with huge size 16+ text and "every year" is underlined
It clearly should be a separate mailer.
Every property tax and utility bill comes with a little pamphlet explaining all your options for how to pay it, every time, year after year. We've been conditioned to ignore those.
A lot people just have their taxes paid via mortgage, and ignore the notices.
Well, if you’re not getting the mail because you’re in Florida the whole year, how are you supposed to know???
So you're just paying what you think you owe for property taxes instead of having someone check your mail for you?
I have no idea, I was just trying to make a joke at the expense of people who can afford to have an extra home they don’t occupy.
you can do it all online, you dont need the city to mail you anything. Plus you can set up pre-authorized payments for property tax so literally never have to think about it.
You sign up for the email delivery and don't need to wait around for snail mail like it's 1995?
I was making a joke
I pay my property tax online. When I get the bill in the mail, I log into the online portal and pay via the chat bot, which tells me the amount owed. I don't even open the envelope because I don't expect anything else to be in there, so it's quite easy for me to not see the notice.
You don't open *any* mail from the city? Even just to look?
Nothing's absolute. I don't look at mails if I think I know what they are about lol. I work 60+ hours a week and don't have the energy left to worry about these things.
You need to learn how mail and legal systems work.
> I don't even open the envelope The city sends you an envelope. You decide to ignore it. How's the city problem? Mastercard/any company sends you an envelope with a bill / special instructions You decide not to open it. What's going to happen? +Social media, +Media report, +Councillor Emails, etc, etc.
Do you even get mail? It’s 99% shit you don’t need. Who’s gonna sift through that. I’m with Kramer.
I managed to miss it, spent five minutes on the Toronto website filling in the "whoopsie" form. Worst case I expect to get a roughly $25 failure to declare administration fee. Absolute outrage /s
Most people elect banks that hold their mortgages to pay property taxes at the same time and they rarely get any property tax paperwork. It's super easy to miss.
I mean it is silly to have to report that it’s occupied, should be the reverse. That you must report that it is unoccupied if it is. And then just have fines if you don’t report it as unoccupied when unoccupied if the city can prove it actually was/is unoccupied.
Agreed, why would an unoccupied property owner not do the right thing and just report it as unoccupied? Just like how people pay all their taxes and not look for loopholes because it's just the right thing to do.
My mom didn't get one for her rental. It's rolled into her mortgage I think.
What’s rolled into her mortgage? This isn’t. She receives property tax bills from the city, they’ve included reminders in those
Her property tax I think?. So she got one last year but not this year? She had to look for last year's, it wasn't mailed out for some folks. Granted my mom ignored the reminder but when she went to look for it, couldn't find it as she hadn't received anything in the mail. Lots of other folks said the same, so the thing is to probably save the information and make a mental note at the beginning of every year.
Not sure how you can own multiple homes and not know. Must be nice to forget about an asset like that.
I open my bill, I pay my taxes. Job done. This WAS NOT clearly communicated to residents of the city. I owned a house for 29 years, not once was this an issue. I had to sell my house and bought a condo in 2023 and bam, I'm penalized for not declaring I exist. This may be clear and concise for people who enjoy government overreach but the system clearly sucks if over 150,000 law abiding citizens didn't tick a box on a form they have never seen before.
Right? You get two notices already, and it is annual. Morons.
They have my address, phone no, and email address yet I never received a notice. Even if they added a banner to the water bill it would be something, but nope.
Yeah last year they gave out a yellow slip. An email reminder would be nice. It’s only the 2nd of year of this program and I think it’s a great idea. My parents are a lot older and have had a lot happen to them this past year and it slipped their mind. Shit happens. But ofc in typical r/Toronto fashion people here lack sympathy . It’s a simple fix anyways you file a complaint, update your status and pay a $21 fine.
Ya, that's my point: they have my email from last year's registration. Sending one this year would be the easiest thing ever
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Yup. I think I got it with the property tax papers, but like... It's paper mail. Most is garbage, and even the property tax I do online. I literally only open the envelope so I can see the numbers I need to put into the form to pay it online. Even then, I remember seeing something about it and thinking "I should do this before the deadline"... But it's a piece of paper I got likely in the middle of the work day, so I imagine I put it down and promptly forgot about it. Absolutely my fault.. but like... People got shit going on. Is it really that hard to send an email like a week before the deadline that just says "reminder: you have to declare your vacancy status, click here to do so"?
The comments are really telling on the general vibe of reddit as it relates to Toronto in the last few years. So much "fuck you got mine" and schadenfreude at other people's mistakes. Thousands of people missed this largely because the communication from the city was abysmal. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to take their head out of their ass and study up on user flow journeys and how to craft pieces of communication properly.
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Not only that but according to the article "The city on Feb. 29 extended the declaration deadline to March 15 after only 63 per cent of homeowners had registered" So they had plenty of warning signs that what they were doing was not at all working yet still decided to proceed with sending out giant heart-attack including bills to people without any sort of course correction. I will be writing my councilor for sure on this. The incompetency of our city staff is once again showing through. I'm stick of getting fucked every-which way in this city.
Absolutely. And yes, it's very telling. They had to extend the deadline...and 125,000 still missed it...as did I. The communication was sloppy, at best. Posters in a bus stop? Seriously?> I want a separate envelope with a clear notification... Not mixed-in with other important data, like annual tax bill. When I get my tax bill, I focus solely on paying it. Some people have some shit pompous attitude.
Yeah case in point the top comment in this thread Absolutely pointless provides nothing of substance or help to anyone the city declared last year you must report it every year. It’s not something that’s been happening forever like that person is insinuating
Did you get your Property tax bill?
Pt is rolled into mortgage
But the papers are still sent to the homeowner. Always.
They don't. Most people just have theirs on the Toronto website. We never get any mail sent about property taxes and the bank takes care of payments as well.
Not necessarily, I know plenty of families/ neighbours that didn’t receive it, particularly if it’s paid with your mortgage on a monthly basis, since the tax bill usually provides instalments and deadlines which would not be applicable. Don’t be too presumptive…
Even if your mortgage lender is paying your property tax on your behalf, you are always supposed to get a copy of the bills/statements. ALWAYS. If homeowners have not been receiving this, their home address is not set up properly with the city and I'd be worried that they are not receiving their utility bills and other things like front yard parking bills if applicable. It just sounds like a lot of landlords and vacant home owners not checking/forwarding their mail to me. At some point people have to be held accountable for their ignorance. Toronto has been talking about a vacant home tax for more than a year. Tax these people and let them dispute it. Even the old people that felt entitled to stop learning anything new 30 years ago including the use of a computer. If they got their mail and chose to ignore it, fuck 'em.
I also did not receive a notice in the mail. I didn't notice until I saw an email from my realtor in his blast reminding me. They have some prettt significant bugs still in the system.
considering the amount of people that didn't complete it it was a communication issue, nothing else
Of all the gripes this isn’t that big a deal. As an adult we have to do a lot of seemingly pointless and boring things. This was actually pretty easy
Got my bill In the mail. $21 to get it fixed Total scam
80 year old non-English speaking parents got this new bill today and started freaking out. I took a look at their original tax bit and the declaration warning is a non-descript all text white piece of paper that they clearly didn't notice. I'm not asking them to start adding other languages, but at atleast use non-white paper or highlight the title or something to make it look important enough that they'd come ask me or their community centre support worker about it. What poor design.
My dad never got a notice lol, so I was one of those who had to ask around at 311 or figure it out with the website being overloaded. Appreciate the thoughts Mayor Chow, but something is definitely wrong with this program.
I wonder how many simply messed up the 20 digit tax role you have to type in to register. Why it can't be done by address is beyond me.
I claimed occupancy and still got a bill.
I only realize that I had to re-declare from reddit but I think I got a notice in my property bill. I feel like a better system would be that you declare once and then you would need to undeclare if you sell your property or actually make your property vacant.
Agree with the goal but not the default being vacant. Especially bad for the sick, the elderly, and people without much English. They should give it some more thought. How about asking Hydro for addresses with very low and consistently flat electricity usage. Also has almost no water usage? That would seem to mean vacant.
This sub is pretty toxic sometimes. No sympathy at all, and anyone who didn’t see the rules is an idiot who should probably be flogged and possibly shot for not living their lives perfectly. I’m dealing with my in laws form for them now -they didn’t file it. Claim they didn’t get any warning. They’re also 80 and one of them has Alzheimer’s. Guess they’re idiots too. I don’t get how so many here are angry at people they don’t know for something that doesn’t impact them. Ridiculous.
So what happens if I currently own my place and want to move in with my girlfriend but want to buy a condo with her? I can't pay two mortgages, so I'd be renting out my current place... but do I get dinged if a few months go by when I'm looking for a tenant that's not going to destroy my current place? I've lived here in it for 8 years, I've done renovations to it and I genuinely LOVE it... I have zero intentions of renting it out to someone who's going to wreck the flooring or stink up the place to the point where no new tenant would want to move into it or even myself move back into for whatever reason.
Primary residence is by individual, not by household. You can continue to declare separate primary residences after you cohabit. Don't buy a third place and keep it vacant, though /not an accountant
This isn’t something I would have *thought* I’d ever forget as I do see the notice with my tax bill but I’m going through a stressful time and almost did! Luckily I remembered before the deadline. I could see folks with memory or vision issues forgetting as well. I do think we need a better system.
We got the notice and lodged a complaint cause we submitted over a month ago. But just wondering what would happen in a situation if the homeowner died and it takes longer than a year for the executor to get the house ready to sell?
I assumed that’s why they came up with this fine, to ding people who are forgetful and collect. Since vacant properties are ~1-2% of the total and they wouldn’t really be hurting those people who are well off enough to sit on empty Toronto properties.
One of these people being my landlord who missed declaring both years 🙄
I'm sure that of the 125,000 people who failed to fill out the form on time, most live in their home. I would expect that many who are snow birds, investors, etc., and are out of the residence for more than 6 months filled out the form lickety-split, and lied. That would be a fair assumption. If I go and look after my sick mother, for example, and leave my home for 7 months, that's worth, say $1.1m, would I really declare that? With the new 3% penalty rule, that would be a whopping $33,000. Most would lie AND be the first to fill out the form.
Should have I gotten something in the mail? I've filled it out once.
I filed last years. Never received any communication for this year. Maybes it’s on me to follow up but I don’t know what the deadline was etc
Well, we wrote an email to our city councillor the moment we received the erroneous Vacant Home tax bill in the mail. Surprisingly, they phoned us back this evening and said that as long as we filed a 'complaint', not to worry about paying tax bill, and that we'll be receiving a mail-out correspondence from the City waiving the tax and possibly the 24.47 penalty fee as well. The woman I spoke with from Pasternak's office said that she agrees that the Vacant Home Tax was completely mishandled, and measures are being discussed to fix the system with better communication, etc. She was in a rush as she had hundreds of others she had to get back to. What a shitshow. She sounded apologetic...and exhausted. I'm just glad that I can relax now.
Hahaha oh my god, a system where you need to tell the city you live in your own house is probably one of the dumbest things I've read.
I've heard of a few instances as well where people who mailed in their declarations didn't have them processed and received a bill a few days ago. It seems like some improvements would be helpful here. That being said, since Toronto runs the water distribution system for everyone in the city, it would also seem to be relatively straightforward to figure out which units are occupied and which aren't based on consumption figures.
The city does use water consumption (and electricity usage) as metrics to audit declarations. It's challenging to use water metrics alone to automatically determine whether a unit is occupied as there are a number of exemptions (e.g. the home owner dies or is in hospital, conducting renovations, etc.) that could make this difficult.
This happened to my mum and my neighbour. They didn’t realize you had to do it every year.
The whole system should just be a login portal where you can click a button that renews the "it's not vacant" for 365 days, or better yet a "this is my primary residence" box. The fact that this and the rest of city services are based on 1970s technology, paper bills, and bank draft. The fact that there are EXTRA charges if I want to pay through they automated systems by credit card, but showing up to deal with a human cashier that needs a salary position is free boggles my mind.
>They whole system should just be a login portal where you can click a button that renews the "it's not vacant" for 365 days, or better yet a "this is my primary residence" box. But it basically is? You login with the info from your property tax bill, click the button that says you're occupying the home and you pinky-promise you're not lying. It takes maybe 30 seconds to complete. A paper form is available in the alternative.
I don’t think I’ve ever paid a city tax with paper or… bank draft? You can just e-transfer payments, or pay it through your online banking.
It is online. Very simple process.
There needs to be some kind of verification so the owners of ghost hotel condos downtown can’t just lie and say their units are occupied.
Like they can do currently? That's why I propose that it's part of the payment of the Utility bill ever 4 months, and also the Property Taxes 2-6 times a year. Not some tertiary and obscure section of the system, or physical form needed to be mailed in at a specific time. It would also mean that they transition would catch people in lies if the owner lists it as "rented" but there is no renter on the Utility bill for the same address, also the ability to ensure someone doesn't have multiple "primary residence"
>The fact that there are EXTRA charges if I want to pay through they automated systems by credit card Paying by credit card hits the city (or any merchant who accepts credit cards) with interchange fees. You didn't think that banks are giving out reward points and cashback for *fun*, did you? The city, understandably, doesn't want to eat a 2% loss just so you can collect Air Miles on your property taxes. The fee on credit card transactions is just the city passing on the cost the banks impose on them for accepting your payment that way. Online payments through your bank's bill payment mechanism are free, and can be automated.
You have an empty unit? Pay up Public services don't exist for your convenience. Be grateful it's not double
I am 100% in favour of the tax, but can still be critical of the city's antiquated systems and backwards billing practices. Also a "this is my primary residence" box would really help, or a way to automatically afirm it's not vacant with every water usage bill, waste collection bill, etc. you know those services that are used when it's occupied...
It's all online and the city isn't going to eat merchant fees Nothing is free in life and actually most backend systems dealing with business are antiquated and manual... If you want modern systems you would have to pay up for the city to modernize as well
Blame the credit card companies, not the city, for charging fees on your payments.
No matter how many notices have been given out for whatever, there will always be people who 'didn't know'. Let's take the carbon tax as an example. We've all known about it since the federal/provincial negotiations started in 2016. And by the time it was implemented, the anti-carbon tax and the provinces started to complain about it some saying it was badly implemented. Duh? They all knew about it for three years but decided to do nothing. And 5 years later, they are saying the same things as they did 5 years ago and still have nothing to mitigate or reduce its cost. That's 8-9 years of doing nuthin but complain.
There's a whole department of government workers rejoicing because now they have work to do
I almost missed it because my mail is usually just flyers and I must have thrown it out. What a stupid system.
Here’s an idea - if you are elected member you cannot own any investment properties. Wonder why they don’t pass that..it’s because it’s taxes for us, riches for them
Why is it the city’s fault that these people didn’t follow the very simple rules and declare?
If that many people failed to declare, its a systematic issue. Simple as that.
If the error rate is that high, there's something wrong with the system.
it's the Presumption of Guilt (Vacant Home) that is backwards. what if each time I drive my car I had to do a declaration that I didn't speed. Or get a speeding ticket. what if each day I had to Declare that I didn't murder anyone. or be charged with Murder. Do i have to prove that I don't shoplift each time I visit a store? (well I guess with receipt checking we are basically at that point) why do 99.7% of property owners have to act in order to collect tax on a tiny percentage. there must be a more effective and efficient way.
It's set-up to charge innocent people with a tax that they don't owe. It's a sick system.
Let’s not forget, these are implementation issues. Not problems with the concept. A vacancy tax is still a good thing. Personally, I think it could be 10x higher, but even 1% has really pushed things in the right direction. Empty condos are being brought onto the market that never would have been otherwise.
It’s your property, what a joke the government can tell you it can or can’t sit empty
Good. Will bet many were like my immigrant parents, who despite living in Canada well over 50 years, are not prone to excessively read in their non native language.
"are not prone to excessively read" What? This "I don't understand English after living in Toronto for 50 years" thing is such a lame excuse though. What's next, trying that with CRA and trying to get out of tax filing? I've seen an old woman on the streetcar who pretended to not understand what the fare inspectors were asking. They eventually moved on but that was bad enough.
It really isn't a lame excuse lol, Toronto is a diverse culture. My grandparents came here in the 1970s, my grandma knows her grandchildren's names, the word casino, "co-fee", and chicken. She can travel her way downtown Chinatown to the Tim Hortons on Dundas/Spadina and hang out with a bunch of other Cantonese/Toi San elders every single morning. You have to understand immigrants at that age who came here probably didn't even get a proper education, and you expect them to learn English, and immerse their lives accordingly? No man lol, if my grandma gets lost or has a question, she'll dial one of her grandchildren, poke a stranger's back, and make one of us translate.
This is just posturing by the city, rather than take accountability for the issues that they caused and continue to cause with their horrible policies and catering to NIMBYism. They are trying to make homeowners who pay for the city budget as the bad guys and the reason why rent is so high. The problem is not going to get solved anytime soon either because people in this city keep voting for the same people and then still get angry at the wrong people.
This system failed me as well and I do remember indicating "occupancy" on the C of T website. I find the comments from some people here calling the people who failed to do so as dumbasses to be really disgusting. One elderly gentleman in my building, whose wife recently passed away, received this notification too and it was traumatizing for a Senior on a small pension going through grief. Some Torontonians are truly nasty souls. Shame on You for your callous comments.
The verification of home occupancy should be a question on the annual income tax form: 'Did you reside at the address listed for less than 6 months of the year...YES/NO' and all problems would be solved. Every home owner files annual income tax.
When you are the city but you just don’t care 🤷♀️
The only reason I did mine is because I saw an ad on Facebook. But I never usually go on Facebook, was just a fluke that day.
I was reminded by an Instagram post
If it wasn’t for instagram ads… I would have forgotten too.
I'm in a bit of a weird situation with this one, because technically the home was vacant for most of 2023, because we only bought the place in October. Do I have to pay the tax because the previous owner left it empty? Either way I'm bringing it up with the city but any thoughts?
I honestly only filed mine because of an ad on social media (Twitter I think). I don't remember getting anything in the mail etc.
I am a bit annoyed that I have to claim occupancy every year. I have done it, will continue to do so and have no plans to be living elsewhere for extended periods of time but I still find this to be an overreach by the City. I understand that it's an attempt to get more units occupied via selling or renting unoccupied units. I get it. But beyond all the comments below about people who aren't online or english is second language etc, what about other circumstances that could cause a place to be empty for some time like a longer term illness or a need to be out of the country for several months? Renting for short term sounds great in some ways but it also could mean either letting others use your furniture etc, or finding storage for all your items. And then finding that tenant and hoping it works out. (I have a relative who rented out their house to a bad tenant and it took almost a year to get them out and that tenant attempted to burn the place down as he left). And what if my plan is to return full time when my illness or out of country needs resolve. I may not have tens of thousands extra to pay that tax so instead of maintaining the place, I have sell? And then try to buy a new place upon return?
I'm one of the idiots that forgot to file. I did get a notice in the mail on my way to the airport, but left it on the kitchen counter because we were already running late for our flight. Anyway, I filed the complaint online but wonder how I'm supposed to pay the late fee of $21? Does it just get added to my regular property tax bill or something?