Regional District of Central Okanagan
Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen
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FRACTURAL OWNERSHIP
Owners of vacation condos face soaring costs. Quarter-share property owners
see taxes triple after assessor reclassifies them to business rate
Gillian Shaw, Vancouver Sun Published: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 Canada.com
The price of paradise takes a hit !
The price of paradise is rising precipitously for quarter-share owners in
vacation properties, who are finding their taxes doubling and tripling after
they buy.
Taxes on one vacation unit in a Vancouver Island resort jumped from $3,800 to
$15,200 when BC Assessment changed its classification from residential to
business in a shift that is hitting resort properties around the province. At
Pender Island's Poets Cove resort in the Gulf Islands, strata fees including
taxes tack on almost $1,100 a month to the cost of a quarter share in a
townhouse that is listed for sale at $229,000 for 12 weeks of occupancy a year.
Some buyers are signing up for fractional ownership in vacation homes only to
find long after the deal is sealed that the residential tax rate has given way
to business and their costs are much higher than they expected. "The developer
comes in, sells the project and sells the management of it to a management
company and he takes all the profit and gets out of Dodge," said Errol Winter,
real estate director at Crown Isle, a resort and golfing community at Courtenay
on Vancouver Island. "He's gone, the assessment comes in the following year, the
taxes go through the roof and the management company is left holding the bag.
"People are yelling." The controversy has prompted a review by the provincial
government involving property taxes around short-term overnight commercial
accommodation properties known more familiarly by the acronym STOCAP. Larger
resorts with more than 20 units and fulfilling rental conditions that trigger
the business assessment are affected by the higher taxes. The rules are outlined
in assessment regulations governing the classification of STOCAPs.
(SEE LINK FOR FULL ARTICLE:) Canada.com
See Assessment Policy at:
BC ASSESSMENT Classification of Strata Short-Term Overnight Commercial
Accommodation:
Posted by Don Quixote at 11/19/2006 0 comments
Labels: budget, Developers, Taxes 2007