15% tax is nothing
. Some of you guys must be growing money on trees with growlight in your basement.
This is a 15% increase in price for foreign buyers. If you are right and it is nothing, expect price to be even more fucked as 15% premium will now be priced in every transaction, foreign or not.
This is a good test for buyer confidence. Hike once, reassess and then go from there. The government can hike again or remove the tax or keep it as is. I would wager they want to see at least 4-6 months to a year of data until the next decision. Perhaps it will kill price, perhaps it will not, need to wait and see. Applying a ban or a much higher tax (100%) is much more drastic and for now I would argue it's wise they didn't do such thing.
Can foreign buyer circumvent by having a related Canadian PR buy it? Sure. But again, if I have 5mil and I want to buy a house, I would think many many many times over to give the money to someone else to buy it so that I don't get fucked over a 5 mil house. It's a large sum of money and you would be surprise how ready some people are to fuck other over for that amount.