BC Speculation and Vacancy Tax in 2026: Rates Double, and the Declaration Still Decides the Bill

BC Speculation and Vacancy Tax in 2026: Rates Double, and the Declaration Still Decides the Bill

Short answer: The speculation and vacancy tax is a B.C. provincial tax on residential property in designated areas, charged on the assessed value and based on who owned the property on December 31. Owners who get a declaration letter must declare by March 31 every year, including owners who owe nothing. For the 2026 tax year the rate is 1 percent for Canadian citizens and permanent residents who are not untaxed worldwide earners, and 3 percent for foreign owners and untaxed worldwide earners. For 2025 and earlier the same two groups paid 0.5 percent and 2 percent. A B.C. resident who does owe tax gets a non-refundable credit of up to $4,000 for 2026, double the $2,000 credit that applied through 2025. Tax for a calendar year is due on the first business day of the following July.

This guide is education only, not tax advice. SVT status turns on title, tax residency, and how the property was used in a specific calendar year. If one of the situations below matches your file, the declaration itself is the place to claim the exemption, and a B.C. tax professional can confirm the category before you file.

Three vacancy taxes, three governments, three declarations

Part of the confusion around this tax is that a Vancouver owner can sit under three similarly named systems at once. They are separate taxes, run by different governments, with different forms and deadlines. Paying or being exempt under one says nothing about the other two.

Tax	Government	Where it applies	Status in October 2026
Speculation and vacancy tax (SVT)	Province of British Columbia	Designated taxable areas across B.C., listed in the next section	Live. Annual declaration due March 31; 2026 rates are 1 percent and 3 percent
Empty homes tax	City of Vancouver	Residential property inside the City of Vancouver only	Live, with its own city declaration and deadline, separate from the SVT
Underused housing tax (UHT)	Government of Canada	Residential property across Canada	Ended for 2025 and later years; returns for 2022 to 2024 are still due

Our guide to the underused housing tax covers the federal lookback years. This guide covers the provincial tax only. The B.C. finance ministry states the same separation on its own pages: the SVT is a distinct tax from both the Vancouver empty homes tax and the federal UHT, so the end of the federal tax in 2025 did not change a single B.C. deadline.

The SVT has applied since 2018. Its stated purpose, in the province's own description, is to discourage speculation and homes sitting vacant in the designated areas. The mechanism is unusual for a property tax: the bill depends less on the building than on the owner. Two identical condos on the same floor can produce a $0 result for one owner and a five-figure bill for the other, because the rate group follows the owner's citizenship, tax residency, and worldwide income reporting, and the exemptions follow how that owner used the unit that year.

Where the tax applies: the taxable areas

Only residential property in a designated taxable area is in the system at all. A vacant house in a community that is not on the list produces no declaration and no tax, however long it sits empty. The province publishes the list and an address lookup map, and the list has grown twice in recent years, which is why owners in communities added recently are the ones most often caught off guard.

The current list, as published by the province on December 8, 2025, groups as follows:

• Metro Vancouver Regional District: Burnaby, Coquitlam, Delta, Langley (city and township), Maple Ridge, New Westminster, North Vancouver (city and district), Pitt Meadows, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Richmond, Surrey, Vancouver, West Vancouver, White Rock, Anmore and Belcarra, plus the UBC lands and the University Endowment Lands.
• Capital Regional District: Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay, Esquimalt, Colwood, Langford, Central Saanich, North Saanich, Highlands, Metchosin, Sooke, Sidney, View Royal.
• Fraser Valley: Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Mission.
• Central Okanagan and the Interior: Kelowna, West Kelowna, Lake Country, Peachland, Summerland, Penticton, Vernon, Coldstream, Salmon Arm, Kamloops.
• Vancouver Island beyond the capital region: Nanaimo, Lantzville, Duncan, North Cowichan, Ladysmith, Lake Cowichan, Courtenay, Comox, Cumberland, Parksville, Qualicum Beach.
• Sea to Sky: Squamish and Lions Bay.

Two expansion waves explain most of the list. A first group that included Squamish, Lions Bay, Duncan, North Cowichan, Ladysmith and Lake Cowichan entered the system for the 2023 tax year. A second group of 13 communities, including Vernon, Coldstream, Penticton, Summerland, Lake Country, Peachland, Courtenay, Comox, Cumberland, Parksville, Qualicum Beach, Salmon Arm and Kamloops, entered for the 2024 tax year, with first declarations in 2025. An owner who bought in one of those communities before the expansion and never rented the property out may have had no filing duty for years and then acquired one without moving, selling, or changing anything.

Three exclusions cut across the map. Reserve lands, treaty lands, and lands of self-governing Indigenous Nations are not taxable areas. Islands that can only be reached by air or water are outside the areas, with Vancouver Island as the stated exception. Within Vernon, the Predator Ridge resort area is specifically excluded. Boundary cases are common at municipal edges, and the province's position is that its online map is a convenience tool while the legislation governs, so a property near a boundary is worth an address-level check before assuming either answer.

Who has to declare, and when

The declaration is the centre of the whole system. The province mails a declaration letter to owners of residential property in the taxable areas, using the mailing address on file with BC Assessment and the Land Title and Survey Authority. An owner who receives a letter must complete the declaration before March 31, every year, exempt or not. There is no electronic version of the letter itself; letters are mailed, and the declaration is then completed online or by phone using the letter ID and declaration code from the letter.

Four mechanics cause most of the errors:

1. Each owner declares separately. Where two or more people are on title, each owner completes their own declaration and claims the exemption that fits their own situation, spouses included. One partner filing does not cover the other.
2. Ownership is measured on December 31. The tax for a calendar year is based on who owned the property on December 31 of that year, which is why a December purchase can create a first declaration the following spring, softened by the year-of-purchase exemption covered below.
3. Circumstances are re-tested every year. The province's reason for an annual declaration is that the facts move: marriages, separations, deaths, a change in where an owner files income tax, a tenancy that starts or ends. Last year's exemption is evidence for this year, not a carry-forward.
4. No letter is not a safe answer. The province directs owners who believe they are in a taxable area but received no letter to contact the SVT office, and to keep the mailing address current with BC Assessment and the land title office. A letter mailed to a stale address still leaves the March 31 deadline running.

Payment runs on a different clock from the declaration. An owner who owes tax for a calendar year pays by the first business day of the following July. To use the province's example, tax owed for 2025 was due on July 2, 2026. Unpaid balances after the due date carry a 10 percent penalty plus interest, and continued non-payment can lead to collection action and a lien on a property the owner holds an interest in.

The rate groups: citizenship is only half the test

The SVT sorts every non-exempt owner into one of two rate groups. The first question is whether the owner is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. The second, which overrides the first, is whether the owner is an untaxed worldwide earner.

An untaxed worldwide earner, in the province's definition, is an individual whose income not reported in Canada is greater than their total income reported in Canada. The comparison combines the incomes of both spouses, and it uses the income year before the tax year. Reported income is the figure on the Canadian return, line 15000 of the notice of assessment where the return has been assessed. This is the category that includes members of what the province calls a satellite family: a household, often with one spouse working abroad, where most of the family's worldwide income is never reported on a Canadian return. Citizenship does not rescue the rate. A Canadian citizen in a satellite family pays at the higher rate, and a foreign owner who reports all of their worldwide income in Canada is tested on the same comparison.

Tax year	Foreign owners and untaxed worldwide earners	Canadian citizens and permanent residents who are not untaxed worldwide earners
2018	0.5 percent	0.5 percent
2019 to 2025	2 percent	0.5 percent
2026	3 percent	1 percent
2027	4 percent	1 percent

The 2026 and 2027 rows are the reason this guide exists. The province raised both groups for 2026 (the Canadian group doubles, the foreign and untaxed worldwide earner group rises by half), and its rate page already publishes the 2027 step for the higher group, to 4 percent, with the Canadian group held at 1 percent. The new rates apply to the use of the property during the new calendar year only. The declaration you filed in spring 2026, covering 2025 use, was priced at the old 2 percent and 0.5 percent rates; the higher rates first bite in the declaration filed in spring 2027, covering 2026 use, with payment due in July 2027.

Two ownership rules sit on top of the table:

• Shared ownership is split by share. Co-owners each owe on their percentage of the assessed value. Two spouses who own a non-exempt property equally each calculate on 50 percent of the value, at their own rate.
• Entities take the highest rate in the chain. For a corporation, trustee, or business partner, the rate is the highest rate that would apply to any of the corporate interest holders, beneficial owners, or partners if they held the property personally. One untaxed worldwide earner inside a holding company is enough to price the whole property at the higher rate, a rule the province illustrates with a corporation whose three interest holders include one person reporting all income in the United States.

The bill, priced five ways

All figures in this section are labelled hypotheticals. The assessed values are round numbers chosen so the arithmetic can be checked by hand, the owners are described only by the facts the tax tests, and the credit applied is the B.C. resident credit described in its own section below. Assessed value for SVT purposes is the BC Assessment value for the property; our property tax guide explains how that assessment is produced and appealed.

Example	Facts	Calculation	Result
A. Canadian owner, second condo, 2026	$800,000 assessed value, Canadian citizen, B.C. tax resident, not an untaxed worldwide earner, no exemption	$800,000 x 1 percent = $8,000, minus $4,000 B.C. resident credit	$4,000 for 2026
B. Same condo, same owner, 2025	Same facts, priced under the 2019 to 2025 schedule	$800,000 x 0.5 percent = $4,000, minus $2,000 credit	$2,000 for 2025
C. Foreign owner, house, three years	$1,200,000 assessed value, foreign owner, no exemption, no B.C. resident credit	2025: x 2 percent. 2026: x 3 percent. 2027: x 4 percent	$24,000, then $36,000, then $48,000
D. The credit floor	$400,000 assessed value, Canadian B.C. resident owner, no exemption, 2026	$400,000 x 1 percent = $4,000, minus $4,000 credit	$0. The credit is non-refundable, so it stops at zero
E. Equal co-owners	$1,000,000 assessed value, two Canadian owners at 50 percent each, no exemption, 2026	Each owner: $500,000 x 1 percent = $5,000, before that owner's own credit position	$5,000 each, $10,000 combined before credits

Example A against Example B is the 2026 change in one line: the same owner, the same condo, and the same use produce double the bill, because the rate doubled and the credit doubled with it, and the two changes cancel only at the $400,000 point in Example D. Above that value the rate increase wins. At $800,000 the credit absorbs a quarter of the gross tax in 2026, against half of a smaller gross tax in 2025.

Example C shows why the foreign-owner file is a planning problem rather than a filing chore. A house held vacant through 2027 at a flat assessment carries $108,000 of SVT across the three years on these figures, before interest or any municipal vacancy tax. Renting the property to a qualifying tenant for six months of each year, which is an exemption rather than a rate reduction, takes the same three years to zero. The gap between those two outcomes is the entire economics of the tax, and it is decided by occupancy in the calendar year, not by anything filed afterward.

The exemptions: where most files end

The province's position is that more than 99 percent of people in B.C. are exempt, most of them through one of two doors: the owner lives in the property as a principal residence, or the property is occupied by a tenant for at least six months of the year. Both doors have conditions, and every exemption is claimed on the declaration. Nothing is automatic.

Principal residence

The principal residence exemption requires the owner to be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, a B.C. resident for income tax purposes, and not an untaxed worldwide earner. An owner with more than one home can claim it only on the home they live in for the longest period in the calendar year. Spouses are treated as sharing one principal residence and cannot each claim a different home, apart from specific cases the province lists, including spouses living apart for work or medical reasons and recent separation or divorce. The ministry can ask for documents that support the claim.

A cluster of related exemptions protects a principal residence through a disruption:

• Residential care: an owner who lived in the home before entering a residential care facility can be exempt for up to two years, where the facility provides services such as daily meals, housekeeping, or nursing care.
• Medical absence: an owner away from home for necessary medical treatment for themselves, their spouse, or their minor child can be exempt for up to two years for the same condition, with certification from a medical or nurse practitioner and a statement that the treatment cannot practicably be obtained closer to home.
• Secondary residence near treatment: a second home occupied periodically so the owner, spouse, or child can receive treatment nearby can be exempt, with written documentation of the treatment. For this exemption the child can be an adult.
• Disability: a property is exempt if a person with a disability lives there as their principal residence, whether or not that person is the owner. The disability can be designated under the Canada Pension Plan, the B.C. employment and assistance legislation for persons with disabilities, or the federal disability tax credit.
• Armed Forces: an owner, or an owner whose spouse, is away because of Canadian Armed Forces service requirements can claim an exemption for that year.
• Moving out of province: an owner who lived in the home and then left B.C. during the year can often still claim for the year of the move where they met the conditions before leaving.
• Other extended absence: a B.C. resident away from a principal residence for an extended period can claim in defined circumstances, but not while incarcerated, and not if the same exemption was claimed in the previous 10 years.

Occupied by a tenant: the six-month test

The tenancy exemption requires a tenant to occupy the residence for at least six months of the calendar year. The months can come from several tenants in sequence, and arm's length and non-arm's length months can be combined, but each tenancy has to meet its own requirements and each tenancy runs in periods of at least one month. Renting part of a property can exempt the whole property: the province's own examples include a house used for vacations whose basement suite is rented for six months, and a main house sitting empty while a detached cottage on the same property is rented year-round. Both properties are exempt in full on those facts.

The requirements then split by the relationship between owner and tenant:

• Arm's length tenants (no family or other advantage in the dealing): the exemption is available to any owner where there is a written tenancy agreement under the Residential Tenancy Act and the tenant makes the residence their home.
• Non-arm's length tenants with a Canadian owner (a citizen or permanent resident who is not an untaxed worldwide earner): an exemption can apply on looser terms. The tenant needs the owner's permission to live there and must live there most of the time in each month counted. No written agreement and no rent are required, which is the case that covers parents living in a home owned by their adult child. Weekends-only use fails the test, because the tenant does not live in the home most of the time in any month.
• Non-arm's length tenants with a foreign owner or an untaxed worldwide earner: the exemption survives only in narrow circumstances. At least one tenant in the residence must be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, a B.C. resident for income tax purposes at year-end, not an untaxed worldwide earner, and must have B.C. income for the year of at least three times the annual fair market rent of the entire property. Tenants cannot pool income to reach the threshold. Priced out: at a fair market rent of $2,500 a month, the annual rent is $30,000 and the qualifying tenant needs B.C. income of at least $90,000, alone.

Two people can never be tenants for this tax: an owner's spouse, and an owner's minor child living with a parent or guardian. A spouse occupying the property is dealt with under the principal residence rules instead, which is why spousal facts belong in that section of the declaration rather than the tenancy section. Short stays also do not build the six months, because each tenancy period must run at least a month; a property cycled through weekend and weekly bookings is not accumulating qualifying months, whatever the occupancy rate looks like. Landlords comparing the SVT position with the rent they can charge will also want the rent increase limits guide, since the sitting-tenant caps in B.C. apply to the same tenancy that creates the exemption.

The remaining exemptions, with their thresholds

• Uninhabitable property: the residence is damaged or uninhabitable for 60 consecutive days in the year because of a disaster or a hazardous condition beyond the owner's control. The exemption covers the year it happened and the following year if the property is still not repaired or replaced by March 1. A property that was already uninhabitable before the event does not qualify.
• Just bought or inherited: a buyer is exempt for the year of purchase where property transfer tax was paid on the transfer, or where the transfer fell under one of the listed property transfer tax exemptions (first-time buyer, newly built home, and several others the province names). An owner is exempt for the year they legally inherited the property. Our closing costs guide for B.C. sets out the transfer tax side of the same purchase.
• Separation or divorce: spouses who have separated and live apart for at least 90 consecutive days in the year can be exempt for the year of separation, and for a second year if the division of family property is still not final and they remain apart. Spouses who separate in the last 90 days of a year shift the eligibility to the following year.
• Recent death of an owner: every owner on title at the time of a death is exempt for the year of death and the year after, and so is the person managing the estate, even if they were not on title. The estate side of a death, including the sale that often follows, is covered in our guide to selling an inherited home.
• Bankruptcy: an owner holding title as a trustee in bankruptcy on December 31 is exempt, as is a bankrupt owner whose property was vested in a trustee for at least 60 consecutive days in the year or on December 31.
• Structures and uses: a strata hotel property, a property that includes a licensed child daycare, and a property only accessible by water are exempt categories, as are properties held in a testamentary trust for a minor child of the deceased (for each year up to and including the year the child turns 19) and in a trust for the benefit of a charity, subject to the beneficiary conditions in the legislation.

Corporations, trustees, and partners have their own exemption page in the province's guidance, and many of the individual exemptions have an equivalent there. The analysis runs through the people behind the entity, which is the same look-through logic as the highest-rate rule above.

The credits: what applies when no exemption does

An owner with no exemption is not necessarily paying the gross figure in the rate table. Two non-refundable credits exist, and neither can be carried into another year's bill.

The B.C. resident credit is the larger and simpler one. It applies automatically where the owner is a B.C. resident for income tax purposes on December 31, is a Canadian citizen, permanent resident, or confirmed B.C. provincial nominee, and is not an untaxed worldwide earner. The maximum was $2,000 for the 2018 to 2025 tax years and is $4,000 for 2026 and later years. It can be spread across one or more properties in the same year, and the owner does not apply for it: the assessed notice shows it already applied.

The credit for other owners covers foreign owners, untaxed worldwide earners, people who are not B.C. tax residents, and certain corporations and trusts. Its amount is based on the owner's B.C. income, it is not automatic, and it runs through a self-directed application in eTaxBC after the declaration is filed and the notice of assessment is received, supported by CRA notices of assessment showing the B.C. income reported on a Canadian return. An owner in this group should treat the credit as a second filing step with its own deadline, not as an adjustment the province will make unasked. The practical difference between the two credits is a trap in itself: the resident credit arrives on its own, so owners assume the other credit does too, and it does not.

A missed declaration is the most expensive version of this tax

The province is direct about the consequence of not declaring: an owner who does not complete the declaration by March 31 receives a tax notice charging the tax at the maximum rate. Maximum-rate pricing ignores the owner's actual rate group and any exemption, because the ministry has no declaration to price from.

Priced as an illustration, on a $900,000 assessed condo owned by a Canadian who would in fact have been exempt as a principal residence: a missed declaration for the 2026 tax year produces a notice built on the 3 percent maximum rate, $27,000 of assessed tax on a property whose correct bill was $0. Even a non-exempt Canadian owner of the same condo, correctly priced at 1 percent minus the $4,000 resident credit, owes $5,000, so the notice overstates that owner's real position by $22,000 until it is corrected.

Correction is possible, and the windows matter:

• A submitted declaration can generally be updated for up to three years after the tax year, including to claim an exemption that was not claimed the first time, and a correction can be made even after a notice of assessment has been issued or tax has been paid.
• The administrator has discretion to accept a late declaration for up to six years in relation to a tax year.
• Declarations for tax years before 2019 can no longer be corrected, and tax assessed for those years is final.

Reviews and audits sit behind all of this. The ministry states that it routinely reviews declarations to confirm the exemptions claimed, and an exemption it cannot confirm can be disallowed and the tax assessed. Certain assessment decisions can be appealed to the minister, and an amount under appeal is still payable while the appeal runs. The record habit that protects an owner is the same one that protects a landlord at tax time: keep the tenancy agreements, the utility and insurance records that show who lived in the property and when, and the income documents behind any untaxed worldwide earner position, for the years a correction or review can still reach.

Buying and selling inside a taxable area

Two rules from the province's guidance for real estate professionals are worth knowing before a purchase completes. First, a buyer does not take on a seller's SVT debt: an assessment belongs to the owner who was assessed. Second, the province can place a lien on a property the assessed owner holds an interest in to secure that debt, and a lien shows on a Land Title and Survey Authority title search, which is the check a buyer's lawyer runs as part of the purchase in any case. Assessments themselves are confidential between the ministry and the homeowner, and the only confirmation an owner gets is the email after declaring, where an email was provided, stating whether they are exempt. A seller who wants to show a clean SVT position to a buyer should keep the declaration confirmations and any notices with the property file rather than expecting the ministry to certify the position to a third party. The tax on the sale itself is a different calculation again, covered in our capital gains guide.

Declaration checklist for the 2026 tax year

The declaration for 2026 use is filed in early 2027, by March 31, 2027, and payment for any 2026 tax is due on the first business day of July 2027. Working through these steps in the autumn, while the use year is still open, is what makes the spring filing a formality:

1. Confirm the property is in a taxable area using the province's address map, and confirm which list applies after the 2023 and 2024 expansions if the community is a recent addition.
2. List every person on title at December 31, 2026. Each of them has a declaration to file and an exemption position of their own.
3. Fix each owner's rate group: citizen or permanent resident or neither, B.C. tax resident or not, and the untaxed worldwide earner comparison on combined spousal income from the prior year.
4. Match the property's 2026 use to an exemption: principal residence facts, tenant months counted by tenancy with the agreement or family facts each one needs, or one of the threshold exemptions (60 days uninhabitable, 90 days separated, year of purchase or inheritance, year of death plus one).
5. If the property will be tenanted to reach six months, count the months now. A tenancy that starts in August cannot produce six qualifying months in that calendar year, and short stays under a month do not count toward the total.
6. If no exemption fits, price the bill at the 2026 rates and check the credit: automatic $4,000 maximum for a qualifying B.C. resident, or the application-based credit for other owners after the assessment arrives.
7. Keep the declaration letter when it arrives, note the letter ID and declaration code, and file before March 31 even if the answer is an exemption. Update the mailing address with BC Assessment and the land title office if it has changed.
8. Diary the July payment date if tax is owed, because the 10 percent late payment penalty runs from that date, not from the declaration deadline.

Frequently asked questions

Is the BC speculation and vacancy tax the same as the federal underused housing tax?

No. The SVT is a B.C. provincial tax in designated B.C. areas, with a March 31 declaration and rates set by the province. The federal underused housing tax was a separate 1 percent tax that ended for 2025 and later years. Vancouver's empty homes tax is a third system, run by the city. Each has its own declaration, and an exemption under one does not carry into the others.

What are the speculation and vacancy tax rates for 2026?

For the 2026 tax year, 3 percent of assessed value for foreign owners and untaxed worldwide earners, and 1 percent for Canadian citizens and permanent residents who are not untaxed worldwide earners. The 2019 to 2025 rates were 2 percent and 0.5 percent. For 2027 the province has published 4 percent for the higher group and 1 percent for the Canadian group.

Do I have to declare if my home is my principal residence?

Yes, if you own residential property in a taxable area and receive a declaration letter. The principal residence exemption is claimed on the declaration; it is not applied without one. Each owner on title declares separately, including both spouses.

What happens if I miss the March 31 declaration deadline?

The province sends a tax notice charging the tax at the maximum rate. A late declaration can still be examined and assessed by the administrator, declarations can generally be corrected for up to three years after the tax year, and the administrator has discretion to accept late declarations for up to six years in relation to a tax year. Tax years before 2019 can no longer be corrected. Unpaid tax after the July due date carries a 10 percent penalty plus interest.

How does the six-month rental exemption work?

A tenant must occupy the residence for at least six months of the calendar year, in tenancy periods of at least one month each. Months from different tenants can be combined. An arm's length tenant needs a written tenancy agreement and must make the residence their home. Family tenants are tested differently depending on the owner's status, and a foreign owner relying on a family tenant needs one tenant with B.C. income of at least three times the property's annual fair market rent. Renting part of a property, such as a basement suite, for six months can exempt the entire property.

What is an untaxed worldwide earner?

An individual whose income not reported in Canada is greater than the total income they reported in Canada, calculated together with their spouse's income and using the year before the tax year. The category includes members of a satellite family, where most of a household's worldwide income is earned abroad and not reported on a Canadian return. An untaxed worldwide earner pays at the foreign owner rate even if they are a Canadian citizen.

How much is the B.C. resident tax credit in 2026?

Up to $4,000, doubled from the $2,000 maximum that applied for 2018 to 2025. It is non-refundable, it is applied automatically for owners who are B.C. tax residents on December 31, are Canadian citizens, permanent residents, or confirmed provincial nominees, and are not untaxed worldwide earners, and it can be applied across one or more properties in the same year. It cannot be applied against tax owed for a different year.

Which B.C. communities are in the taxable areas?

The areas cover most of Metro Vancouver including the UBC and University Endowment Lands, the Capital Regional District municipalities, Abbotsford, Chilliwack and Mission in the Fraser Valley, Kelowna, West Kelowna, Lake Country, Peachland, Summerland, Penticton, Vernon, Coldstream, Salmon Arm and Kamloops in the Interior, Nanaimo, Lantzville, Duncan, North Cowichan, Ladysmith, Lake Cowichan, Courtenay, Comox, Cumberland, Parksville and Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island, and Squamish and Lions Bay. Reserve, treaty, and self-governing Indigenous lands are excluded, as are islands reachable only by air or water other than Vancouver Island, and the Predator Ridge resort area in Vernon. The province's address map settles boundary cases.

Sources

Rules and figures in this guide were taken from the Province of British Columbia's speculation and vacancy tax pages below, read in October 2026. The legislation governs where a summary and the Act differ.

• Province of British Columbia, Tax rates for the speculation and vacancy tax (last updated July 3, 2026): the 2018 rate, the 2019 to 2025 rates, the 2026 rates of 3 percent and 1 percent, the published 2027 rates of 4 percent and 1 percent, ownership on December 31, payment due the following July, the shared ownership split, and the highest-rate rule for corporations, trustees and partners: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy-tax/how-tax-works/tax-rates
• Province of British Columbia, Taxable areas for the speculation and vacancy tax (last updated December 8, 2025): the full list of taxable areas by community and regional district, the excluded lands, and the Predator Ridge exclusion in Vernon: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy-tax/how-tax-works/taxable-areas
• Province of British Columbia, Frequently asked questions about the speculation and vacancy tax: the annual March 31 declaration duty for owners who receive a letter, the statement that more than 99 percent of people in B.C. are likely exempt through principal residence use or six-month rental, payment methods, the 10 percent late payment penalty plus interest, collection and lien consequences, audits, appeals, and the rule that a buyer does not take on a seller's SVT debt: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy-tax/faq-speculation-and-vacancy-tax
• Province of British Columbia, Exemptions for individuals for the speculation and vacancy tax: the full exemption list and conditions, including principal residence eligibility, residential care and medical absence periods of up to two years, the 60-consecutive-day uninhabitable test, the year of purchase and inheritance exemptions, the 90-consecutive-day separation test, the death of an owner exemption for the year of death and the following year, and the bankruptcy, disability, Armed Forces, strata hotel, daycare, water-access, and trust exemptions: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy-tax/exemptions-speculation-and-vacancy-tax/individuals
• Province of British Columbia, Tenancy requirements for the speculation and vacancy tax exemptions (last updated July 7, 2026): the six-month occupancy test, one-month minimum tenancy periods, combining tenants, the whole-property effect of renting part of a property, the arm's length written agreement test, the non-arm's length rules for Canadian owners, and the three-times-fair-market-rent B.C. income test for a foreign owner's family tenant: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy-tax/exemptions-speculation-and-vacancy-tax/individuals/tenancy-requirements
• Province of British Columbia, Tax credits for the speculation and vacancy tax (last updated April 9, 2026): the B.C. resident credit conditions, the $2,000 maximum for 2018 to 2025 and the $4,000 maximum for 2026 and later, automatic application, and the income-based credit for other owners applied for through eTaxBC after assessment: https://www2.gov.BC.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy-tax/tax-credits
• Province of British Columbia, Terms and definitions for the speculation and vacancy tax: the untaxed worldwide earner definition, combined spousal income, the prior-year income basis, and reported income as line 15000 of the CRA notice of assessment: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy-tax/how-tax-works/terms-definitions
• Province of British Columbia, Special circumstances with the speculation and vacancy tax: the March 31 deadline, the tax notice at the maximum rate where no declaration is filed, declaring for a deceased owner, and declaring from away or through a representative: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy-tax/how-to-declare/special-circumstances
• Province of British Columbia, Correct your speculation and vacancy tax declaration (last updated June 4, 2026): corrections generally available for up to three years after the tax year, administrator discretion to accept late declarations for up to six years, and the closed window for tax years before 2019: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy-tax/how-to-declare/correct-your-declaration

The author of this guide is not your tax advisor. The two files most likely to produce a wrong bill are a family tenancy tested under the wrong owner's status and an untaxed worldwide earner position built on the wrong income year. Both are declaration questions with six-figure assessed values behind them, and both are worth an hour of professional time before March 31 rather than a correction afterward.