Joan Bowles
Sun
Dear new “house millionaires”: Congratulations, you are now eligible to receive little or nothing of the homeowner grant.
Never fear, if you are 65 or older you may defer your property taxes. Which means that, after being the proud owner of a home, possibly for many years, you can now say that you don’t completely own it until those deferred taxes, plus interest, are repaid. A big step backward.
I have written to both the minister of finance and her deputy to ask them a simple question, but cannot get a reply.
Does the government think it fair to give wealthy property owners whose assessments are lower than the threshold (and have not nearly the taxes to pay) the full grant and yet the “house millionaires” now get little or nothing?
What is the reasoning behind a policy that denies five per cent of the property owners in B.C. the homeowner grant? There are many seniors in this group who fought for their country.
In the year 2003 we got the full homeowner grant, but as our assessment has gone up and our taxes have doubled, we only got $80 last year.
This year we will probably get nothing.
The government thinks it is doing us a favour by raising the threshold each year.
What it can’t seem to understand is that it makes little difference to us because the assessment still goes over the new threshold.
Joan Bowles lives in Victoria.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
