The bedroom tax

How doies a conspiracy theory get started? Is there always a spark of truth igniting a wildfire of misinformation? Exaggeration? Fear? And why is it people always want to believe the worst?

Let’s take the Vacant Bedroom Tax as a good example.

“I told you it would happen as far back as two years when WEF-Trudeau included the demand of underutilized space in your house,” wote a demented and oft-deleted poster to this pathetic site yesterday. “You’d better not be a hypocrite. Let’s see your household be the first to take in the migrants.”

And to accompany that message, as irrfutable ‘proof’ came this TikTok vid. (By the way did you know 40% of Americans under the age of 30 get their news from this app? OMG.)

Source: TikTok

As it turns out. The UK actually does have a bedroom tax. Well, sort of.

In some places homeowners who register and rent out spare rooms can enjoy tax-free rental income (to a maximum amount). As well, there’s a welfare policy that effectively penalizes people living in public housing who have extra, unused space. In that case their housing benefit is reduced, forcing them to find other ways to replace lost income.

In terms of the King making a tax-your-extra-bedroom proclamation, that seems to exist only in TikTok land.

But wait. What about Australia?

The Labour government there has floated the idea of a bedroom tax (or incentive) as a way of dealing with that country’s real estate affordability crisis. Politicians argue this would inflate the supply of rental accommodation, make real estate more efficient and encourage people to downsize into homes of more appropriate dimension. The opposition says it’s completely bonkers, an invasion of privacy, a crime against property rights (which Aussies, like us, don’t have) and a cop-out for the government not fixing the problem with more affordable units.

In Canada, as you know, we already have vacant house taxes in major cities like Toronto and Vancouver. There’s a federal underutilized housing tax, which is slapped on non-resident owners who spend less than 180 days a year in their Canadian homes. And we have a federal flip tax, provincial speculation taxes, land transfer taxes, and special stuff like the 5% welcome-to-NS tax in that province.

But we don’t have an empty bedroom tax. Yet.

By the way, how many spare rooms are there in our Dominion?

A media report claims that 12,000,000 bedrooms across Canada are empty. Three-quarters of those, or nine million, are in homes owned by (gasp) boomers.

Meanwhile, as this blog has pointed out with nauseating repetition, the construction industry in many places is on the verge of collapse, new-home sales have crashed to the lowest point in decades, and everybody says the government plan to erect a half-million new units a year is delusional. The Canada Build Homes thingy Carey has announced, developers muse, is dead in the water. Objectives are unreasonable. House prices will not come down. Precious few rentals are being built in a negative economic climate.

In short, there is no viable, easy-to-access, quick-fix solution to creating millions of new living spaces, especially for lower-income folks, new Canadians just starting out, temporary foreign workers, international students or asylum seekers. Except… er… your empty-nester house?

This is how conspiracies start.

They wouldn’t dare. Right?

About the picture: “Our current dog Bru enjoying bubbles with grandson,” writes Dan (who probably has a spare bedroom).

To be in touch or send a picture of your beast, email to ‘garth@garth.ca’

Source: https://www.greaterfool.ca/2025/09/28/the-bedroom-tax/