Dear Editor:
With the arrival of my assessment notice, I now find that my house and lot are valued at just over $1 million. That means that if I sell it I will have made a profit of over $800,000, free of any tax. This is roughly the same amount that I was paid for my last 11 years of teaching and research at SFU, an amount on which I did pay tax.
Isn't this all wrong? Isn't this part of what the Occupy movement is all about? I was taxed on money earned by working hard, yet a similar amount of unearned money, money obtained by doing nothing, goes untaxed. I am sure there are many millions of people in this country who would love to get $800,000 tax-free without working for it, but won't.
I know one cannot create a perfectly fair society, but this is just one example of a system that is grossly unfair.
David Huntley, Burnaby
