Bought a small pied-a-terre in Vancouver. I read the rules and it says that even if the car is registered in Washington, if I own a property in BC, I must pay 20% tax on my vehicle.

Effing Ridiculous.

Anyone knows how to get around it and how strictly it is enforced? Canada became such a sh*t country (I am Canadian as well so no hate please ) ever since JT took over.

 

Are you resident in BC. - I.e BC drivers licence and health card etc ?

 

No not a BC resident. I know there is a way to get car in Alberta then switch to BC resident to get PST waived but not the case for me.

I don't have either DL or Health Card.

 

You are a Merican?

 

Canadian

 

The reason I asked was that it would make sense to register the car in your home province; presumably they would not charge tax on a car to be send outside BC, and you would keep your non-BC plates permanently.

I ran into a guy at the Nürburgring a few years ago who had a Porsche with Idaho plates. He had had it there for years. Once a year he drove it to Norway for a day. That meant he had left the EU and when he returned he had a new 364 days to keep the car there

 

I have a Mustang in Europe since '95 with Ontario plates! I was skirting some grey areas when driving it there but so far had no issues however, this might change the next time I'll try driving it. Could be time to bring the old girl back home since mid 80's 5.0 are starting to worth something.

 

crazzzy

 

I think this is geared to get some money form all the foreign students with unlimited budgets.

 

I understand that but they should've targeted cars > 300k then. They want 25% on cars over 150k CAD that's around 115k USD.

I just feel like Canada, especially BC is turning into communist province. They punish hard working people so they can give money out to hobos. It is turning into the most backward country.

 

The implementation of the tax caused a feeding frenzy of car sales in the immediate days prior and for high end dealers to be ghost towns after. The dealers are having a tough time out here I think.
The way to minimize the impact is to use multiple short term leases that result in the price of the car being reset each time it goes below the threshold. This works better for cars that are closer to $150k than cars that are $400k obviously.
Lease $155k car for 6 months. Pay 25% tax on that lease payment. Reprice car at 20% rate for a year and pay 20% tax on those lease payments. By now you're 15% rate - lease car however long you want because its not a material difference to the next threshold. The result is that you are able to avoid paying the higher tax on the entire car and limit it to the incremental amounts between tax thresholds.

Never ever vote NDP. I have friends who are selling their houses because of all the supplemental taxes that have been put in place on high (very high) value homes. People who have lived in their homes for 20years are now paying 3x the taxes once all the BS layers of NDP nonsense is pulled from them. They are choosing to leave instead of burn through their savings just for the privilege of living in the same house.

 

Make sure that your car is not used "primarily" in BC. In other words you need to drive it back to Washington. How much depends on how often you are in BC vs. Washington.

 

How would they ever know where it's primarily used? Unless you're getting a lot of tickets and they're logging your plate # that way, I don't see how they could tell.

 

I guess if you leave your car in WA, they can track it through border crossing. But how do you define primarily used? More than 183 days?

 

Well I never voted NDP but most Vancouver guys working minimum wage job have communist mindset to screw over hardworking people and they will vote for NDP. Anyways.... for your friends who are leaving. Are they living in 3m+ homes? I heard 3m is the cut off for additional property taxation. Along with 2% speculation tax on the assessed value of home (60k a year on top of your property tax for 3mil house) if you don't rent it out.