"We were ready and we are ready," Brar said of the launch of the vacant home tax portal. "We did have a global issue that affected a lot of our shared services on our portal, and that's where we saw the performance (issue)."
Brar said city staff have rebuilt the declaration portal in a bid to make it more user-friendly. Usage is up this year compared to the approximate 2,000 people who declared online during the first week of last year's declaration period.
The fee is intended to fight the city's housing crisis, pushing people with empty homes to sell or rent them to avoid the tax. Last year's rollout saw over over 169,000 city residents complain after being wrongly charged the fee.
Tens of thousands of reminder letters in bright yellow envelopes have begun to arrive in the mail to homes across the city. The letters inside, written in multiple languages, point people to a number of places to make a declaration, including the online portal.
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