Indeed. And Vancouver seems to have a simpler method too: A tax of 1% of assessed value.

In Paris, they need to come up with a "market rent" figure for each and every property to tax. Do they have those numbers? Using assessment value as Vancouver does, seems a lot easier.

Also, I wonder what's a bigger number: 1% of assessed value, or 60% of market rent. The previous 20% of market rent seems to be a low number, compared to the wealth stored in the property.

Market rent would likely be established through a cap rate of assessed value. So I'm assuming it's not really that much harder to do. Works out to around 30% higher than Vancouver's tax.

The problem with Vancouver's system is they determine vacancies through a survey. If you lie, you pay a severe penalty. However, they have a track record of not enforcing anything.

For example, the city has a law preventing the use of a home for an AirBnB full-time without a B&B license. Only 56 B&B licenses have issued in the metro area, and there were more than 2,570 listings that violated that rule at last check. City's response to our article was they have no idea how to figure that out...we offered the bot that cross references it and they said no thanks.

Vancouver tax is full of loopholes though and unlikely to change anything. Owners can simply hire phony renovators and keep changing their applications to forever wait for their renovation permits (and avoid the tax) or pretend the work isn't completed. There's many other loopholes, mainly involving strata-governed dwellers with non-rental bylaws who are exempt from the empty home tax a category guaranteed to have exploded in size since the tax was announced.

We cover Vancouver extensively, it's our most written about market. Two of our writers focus exclusively on the situation there, since it's the global real estate bubble on steroids.