By 2012, the average Canadian homeowner was worth $824,000—the average renter just $120,000 (in constant dollars). That’s a seven-fold increase in wealth gap between owners and renters over 28 years. It’s doubtless even wider five years later. In Vancouver, roughly half of households are in each camp.
How did one half of Vancouver get so much richer than the other?
While it’s clearly not the only factor, decades of federal and provincial favouritism in tax spending have in effect pumped billions of dollars into the accounts of Canadians who own their homes, while dribbling a comparative pittance into the pockets of renters. And some of the biggest perks have gone to the very richest of Canadians. Nearly 90 per cent of the $43.6 billion in benefits lavished exclusively on home owners in this decade alone were accounted for by the exemption from capital gains tax for profits earned on the sale of a principal residence.
These graphs follow how federal tax favours have helped make Canadian home owners an awful lot richer, while renters’ savings have inched up. A future article will look at how we might restore a fairer balance.
Original Article
Source: thetyee.ca/
Author: Christopher Pollon, Christopher Cheung and Chris Wood
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