The government may not tax capital gains on your primary residence—yet—but don’t think they’re not coming for your home in other ways. They’re already taxing nearly every aspect of homeownership, and it’s only getting worse. It’s no secret that Canadian governments are always on the hunt for more revenue to fund their never-ending spending, and now they’ve set their sights on what’s been one of the least taxed assets: your home. The result? Homeowners are getting squeezed for every dollar, sometimes even forced to sell the homes they’ve spent their lives building.

Take the federal government's recent move to increase the capital gains inclusion rate to 67% on gains above $250,000. Let’s say your family repurchased a cottage in the 1960s for $20,000, and now it’s worth over $2 million. That’s a capital gain of $2 million, and thanks to this new rule, $1.3 million of it is taxable. If your kids inherit the property, they will owe the taxman around $650,000—half the property’s value! If they don’t have that kind of cash lying around (and who does?), guess what? The family cottage has to be sold. Generations of memories are gone, just like that.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, renting out part of your home through platforms like Airbnb has become a cash cow for municipalities. They’re slapping on licenses and annual fees that can hit $2,000 or more, and homeowners must collect occupancy taxes—Vancouver’s is 3%. Of course, the B.C. government and Ottawa take their cut too, with GST and PST piled on top of both the rental fee and the occupancy tax.

Let’s be clear: the government wins in this scenario, not homeowners. Homeowners who used to rent their properties a few times a year just to cover property taxes or maintenance now find themselves drowning in regulations, inspections, and mountains of paperwork. Rentals that once made sense financially are quickly becoming more trouble than they’re worth. Many owners are left with no choice but to sell, pushed out by a system designed to benefit everyone but them.

The government argues that cracking down on short-term rentals helps ease the housing crisis by freeing up homes for long-term renters. But for homeowners, switching to long-term rentals is a nightmare. Under the CRA’s new “Change-in-Use Rules,” if you rent your home long-term, it’s considered sold to yourself, and you owe GST on the full market value. In B.C., with a combined GST and PST rate of 12%, if your home is worth $1 million, you’re suddenly on the hook for $120,000 to CRA and the province. And it gets worse—if you later decide to move back into your home, any increase in value is hit with a capital gains tax.

These new tax rules are confusing, untested, and likely to trap homeowners in contradictory regulations. It’s another example of how the government keeps finding ways to take more from hardworking Canadians, even regarding the homes we’ve worked so hard to build.

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