A so-called “secret” Liberal plan to hike taxes on home sales “just isn’t true,” said Liberal candidate Adam Vaughan, who was the target of a Conservative attack on Twitter this week.
In the wake of the story being published on Jul. 17, 2020, both the CMHC’s communications department and then-CEO Evan Siddall issued multiple statements about the story being false.
Siddall directly attacked the reporting and Blacklock’s in multiple statements.
On Jul. 18, 2020, he wrote on Twitter: “The suggestion that the CMHC funding a study on any tax measure is inaccurate and misleading reporting. We are co-funding a Solution Lab on housing wealth and inequality. We do not control the agenda nor the research base, which is a minor component of the protocol.”
Then on Jul. 20, 2020, he replied to Blacklock’s on Twitter saying: “Don’t let facts get in the way of your poorly researched story. Instead, continue to promote your fabricated story so that people who serve the public have to distract themselves from doing things to improve our country.”
However, CMHC’s own records include the project’s charter, which was signed by Generation Squeeze and CMHC in March of 2020. The charter directly references an examination of tax policy.
“One key source of this intergenerational inequality is tax policy that privileges home ownership, and shelters housing wealth, especially in principal residences, from taxation by comparison with other assets,” read the charter’s “problem statement.”
The charter stated the study would “examine tax and other public finance policy opportunities” to level the intergenerational playing field.
“If they’re explicitly studying the possibility of changing taxation on homes, it’s awfully hard to claim that you’re not looking at the possibility of a home equity tax,” said Wudrick.
(Merci)
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