Tens of thousands declare early to avoid Toronto's vacant home tax
Program launch prompts some complaints, after online portal runs into brief technical issues
Toronto's redesigned vacant home tax rollout has begun, with over 59,000 people filing their paperwork in the first week.
Some councillors say they were left responding to complaints about the rollout, after the city's online declaration portal experienced technical problems shortly after launch.
The city's chief technology officer, Sonia Brar, said for two to three hours last Monday the city's online system would not accept form submissions, which is how city residents would make their declaration for the tax. The vacant tax portal was part of a suite of online city services that was affected by the problem, she said.
"We were ready and we are ready," Brar said of the launch of the vacant home tax portal.
"We did have a global issue that affected a lot of our shared services on our portal, and that's where we saw the performance (issue)."
That brief problem occurred just days after a soft launch of the web portal and the start of a redesigned vacant home tax system. The fee is intended to fight the city's housing crisis, pushing people with empty homes to sell or rent them to avoid the tax.
Last year's rollout saw over 169,000 city residents complain after being wrongly charged the fee.
Brar said city staff have rebuilt the declaration portal in a bid to make it more user-friendly.
Usage is up this year compared to the approximate 2,000 people who declared online during the first week of last year's declaration period.
"We really did take the feedback we got from last year's process to heart and tried to simplify it as much as possible," she said.
Tens of thousands of reminder letters in bright yellow envelopes have begun to arrive in the mail to homes across the city. The letters inside, written in multiple languages, point people to a number of places to make a declaration, including the online portal.
City spokesperson Beth Waldman encouraged anyone who ran into problems last Monday to try to make the declaration again either online or over the phone to 311.
"Get it done, get it off your to do list, and then you don't have to think about it until next year," she said.
Mayor Olivia Chow called the tax's initial rollout earlier this year "fundamentally flawed," and city council backed her push for a complete redesign of the program.
Councillors approved that work in September, with an extended declaration period, a communications blitz and dedicated customer service team to help city residents declare.
Portal issues are 'growing pains,' mayor says
Chow said that despite the issue with the portal, she's encouraged that tens of thousands of people have made a declaration successfully in the opening week.
"I really don't know what caused the initial crash," she said. "Sometimes (there) are growing pains."
The mayor said she knows the level of scrutiny on the process has been heightened after the earlier problems. She's asking for people to be patient with the process.
"I have faith that it will work out," she said. "People make mistakes, right? No one is 100 per cent perfect. Let's be kind. Let's give it a bit of a breathing room."
Coun. Paula Fletcher said the problems with the web portal left her and her staff dealing with calls and emails from frustrated residents.
She says she still believes that tax is an important tool to fight the housing crisis, but she's unhappy with the start of this year's rollout.
"It is very disappointing that it's off to such a shaky start," she said.
Coun. Brad Bradford said his office also received calls and emails about the portal. He'd hoped the launch would have been smoother given the situation with the tax last year, he said.
"There's a lot of people that have anxiety about the vacant home tax and certainly the rollout last year was a total fiasco," he said. "Despite all of the consultation and the promises and the millions of dollars spent to collect more of your tax dollars, you know, the flub at the beginning of the week here does not inspire a lot of confidence."
Coun. Dianne Saxe said she had just sent her resident newsletter last week, urging people to make their declaration, only to have them discover the portal was down.
"I promised people it would be much easier this year," she said. "So, four hours later I saw emails from a couple of constituents saying 'I just tried it and it doesn't work.'"
Saxe and her team are planning to attend events in her ward to help residents make the declarations. Her hope for the rest of the months-long declaration period is that it's uneventful.
"I just hope it's boring," she said. "Boring is good with this particular thing."
The last day to make a declaration is April 30, 2025.
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