Supreme Court of Canada dismisses bid to appeal B.C. foreign buyer tax case

The Supreme Court of Canada won’t hear an appeal challenging the application of British Columbia’s foreign buyer tax on a real estate purchase involving joint ownership by a Canadian citizen and a foreign national.

The B.C. Court of Appeal had previously dismissed an appeal brought by a couple who jointly bought an apartment in Richmond, B.C., putting 95 per cent in the Canadian woman’s name, and five per cent in the name of her foreign partner.

But the man had actually paid 40 per cent of the purchase price, with the woman explaining the disparity by saying it was a Chinese custom for a husband to pay a “bride price” by buying his wife a home. 

The couple, who were engaged in 2014 when they bought the home under a presale contract, paid the foreign buyer tax on only the five per cent registered to the foreign man, but an audit later found the tax “payable on the fair market value of the whole property.”

The B.C. government had told the lower court the rule was meant to “prevent tax avoidance by foreign investors who own beneficial interests held indirectly by others.”

The Supreme Court of Canada refused the couple leave to appeal on Thursday.

The couple had claimed imposing the tax on the entire value of the property was “profoundly unfair,” but the three-judge panel of the Appeal Court found they could have avoided paying the tax on the property’s entire value if they had registered ownership based on their contributions to the purchase price. 

The appellate ruling from earlier this year said the man, Li-Yuan Chuang, paid 40 per cent of the purchase price, but registered only a five per cent stake in the property, which the couple declared to have a value of $474,500 at the time of purchase.

His Canadian partner, Chia-Wen Hsia, said it was “customary in Chinese culture to pay for ‘bride price’ as in the husband buying a house for the wife.”

“In my husband’s case, he is not rich so he could only pay for part of the purchase price,” Hsia is quoted as saying in the appellate ruling. 

The B.C. Supreme Court initially dismissed the couple’s legal challenge in 2024.

The most recent assessed value for the two-bedroom apartment in the Avanti Richmond complex is $820,000.

The original B.C. Supreme Court ruling said a B.C. Finance Ministry tax analyst put the additional tax owed by the couple at just over $126,000. 

The B.C. foreign buyer tax is 20 per cent of market value.

The couple’s lawyer, Massao Morinaga, said they had no comment about the Supreme Court of Canada’s dismissal of the case.

He said it was the “end of the road judicially,” but the current foreign buyer tax legislation is drafted in a way that “captures situations that are inequitable.” 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2026.