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Comment by Ajay-p | Hacker News Reader

This is bizarre but maybe I see the reason why. If it's to restrain foreign ownership of rental properties, I don't think it's going to have much impact. Renters who want to live there bad enough will pay it, and I would not be surprised if some foreign owners will help with that process.

On the other page.. If foreign landlords are suspected of not paying their full taxes, this is one way to increase a guarantee that the taxes will be paid.

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It's more the CRA is too lazy and/or incompetent to successfully collect from foreigners and so they are forcing liability on the people paying (in this case the renter). I personally think this is bad precedent to set because it forces utterly excessive KYC requirements on renters. The government should be passing a law here to correct this to limit liability to a very narrow set of circumstances (In this case it would be something like if you pay rent via international money transfer out of the country you should have some responsibility to withhold a fixed percent here, otherwise it's not your problem) but they probably won't.

> This is bizarre but maybe I see the reason why. If it's to restrain foreign ownership of rental properties.

The reason is that the government wants its tax money. Since the cash flow is coming from the renter they are also responsible for it. There is a similar situation with employers who are responsible for remitting tax withholding even though it is the employee who owes the income tax.

How far does this extend? If a restaurant doesn't pay its taxes would the Canadian government go after the people who ate there for the money? They are the source of the restaurant's cash flow.

I think if you're going to be paying the taxes you should also get ownership of the property.

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