The good news for Eric Chang is that Canada still welcomes him, even if B.C. treats him like some filthy rich foreign land-speculator.
After six years in this country, the Taiwan native was just granted permanent resident status. A couple more and he can become a citizen. A 91原创 flag is proudly displayed in the window of his Serious Coffee shop in View Royal.
The bad news? He continues to be weighed down by a foreign-buyers tax bill so daunting that he can鈥檛 even bear to open the envelopes when the Finance Ministry mails reminders of what he owes. Interest charges have pushed the ever-growing total to $282,433.
What鈥檚 really frustrating is that Chang feels he should never have been hit with the tax in the first place. He feels victimized by a provincial government that threw open the doors so he could invest his life savings here, then blindsided him with a measure that threatens to ruin him. He is caught in a Kafkaesque nightmare in which the province is simultaneously welcoming him as a boon to Canada and treating him as an alien speculator.
Chang鈥檚 story has appeared here before, the last time in 颅September.
The Taiwan native, his then-wife and their two children came to Canada in 2015, hoping to be accepted by B.C.鈥檚 provincial nominee program 鈥� a path to permanent-resident status for immigrant entrepreneurs.
In April 2016, they signed a pre-sale agreement and put down a big deposit on a house that was to be built in 颅Coquitlam 鈥� but no sooner had the ink on that deal dried than B.C.鈥檚 Liberal government announced a 15聽per cent foreign buyers tax in the Lower Mainland that summer. Chang says there鈥檚 no way they would have signed the contract had they known the tax was coming. They couldn鈥檛 afford it.
But he was locked in. When the sale was registered in 2017, after the house was finished, Chang and his wife were each down for one per cent while his sister, a longtime 91原创 citizen who was helping them, was in for 98. A notary told the couple they only needed to pay tax on their stake.
The house sold in 2017 when Chang bought a home in Colwood, near the View Royal coffee shop he purchased.
Then, a year later, came a tax bill for $242,000. The province figured Chang had used his 91原创 sister as a way to dodge the foreign-buyers tax on the Coquitlam purchase.
For Chang, the issue is that the tax shouldn鈥檛 have applied to people in his situation in the first place. When Ontario imposed its version of the foreign-buyers tax, it exempted people who had signed pre-sales before the tax was imposed. Not B.C. The result was Chang being trapped by the kind of unintended consequence some New Democrats warned against when the Liberals introduced the tax.
Once in power, though, the New Democrats brought in their own legislation in 2018 that increased the tax to 20 per cent and expanded it to include home purchases in real estate hot spots including Greater Victoria and Nanaimo.
Chang says he actually doesn鈥檛 object to the tax, that he supports its goal of suppressing house prices. 鈥淚 am not against their law. I just want it to be fair.鈥� And what鈥檚 not fair is nailing somebody with a 15-per-cent tax on a deal they can鈥檛 afford to back out of, but which the tax now renders unaffordable.
The Finance Ministry, which cites privacy rules for preventing it from commenting on an individual case, does say it wants to work with people so that they can pay the taxes they owe. Still, $282,000 is a big bill, one whose weight Chang feels every day. He isn鈥檛 one of the mansion-buying gazillionaires the politicians had in mind. His money is in the coffee shop, which he must own as one of the many conditions of the provincial nominee program. 鈥淚 work seven days a week,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not because I鈥檓 a workaholic. I have no choice.鈥�
When the lease on his car expired and he went to get a new one, he was rejected because of the tax bill. He wonders if the same problem will arise when it鈥檚 time to renew his mortgage.
He鈥檚 all alone, save for that sister in the Lower Mainland. His kids are back in Taiwan with his ex. The other day, she warned him to be wary of getting a vaccine, as there would be no one to help him should he have a bad reaction.
Meanwhile, the letters from the ministry keep coming. 鈥淭he interest keeps building.鈥�
Is this really what the province had in mind when it went after foreign speculators to keep real estate prices down? And by the way, how鈥檚 that going?