A so-called “secret” Liberal plan to hike taxes on home sales “just isn’t true,” said Liberal candidate Adam Vaughan, who was the target of a Conservative attack on Twitter this week.

The Conservative Party alleged in a tweet on Thursday that Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and Vaughan “have a secret plan” to tax home sales by 50 per cent.

“It’s a blatant misrepresentation of a document that if they just read it twice they would come to the same conclusion the rest of the world has,” said Vaughan, who had been the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development in the recently dissolved government.

The tweet from the Conservative party continues: “This is Trudeau’s hidden agenda: tax hikes to pay for his massive deficits.”

.@JustinTrudeauand @TOAdamVaughanhave a secret plan to tax the sale of your home at 50%. This is Trudeau’s hidden agenda: tax hikes to pay for his massive deficits. You work hard, you increase the value of your home, and Liberals take 50%. How is that fair? #NotAsAdvertisedpic.twitter.com/Q8Nbb4O1jz

— Conservative Party (@CPC_HQ) September 12, 2019

The tweet also has a photo attached of a page of what Vaughan said was a report of the Liberal Party’s Ontario.

“The comment they’ve highlighted and gone berserk over was never even a recommendation,”

Though the page is labelled as a “policy proposal,” Vaughan insists it was simply something that came out of town halls he held.

“The caucus was looking at the idea and asked me – because I had been doing some town halls on behalf of the Minister (of Families, Children and Social Development) – to report back on some of the ideas that we might look at, but at the same time report back on what some of the town halls were saying to give a broad sort of cross section of ideas that were circulating,”

The wording on the page tweeted by the Conservatives seems to reinforce Vaughan’s claim.

“Another idea that has emerged from housing town halls is a sliding scale on the Capital Gains Tax on the sale of principle residences. A 50% tax after one year of ownership, 25% after two years, 15% after 3 years, 10% after 4 years, 5% after five,” is the idea, which is pitched as a way to prevent house flipping.

Capital gains tax are taxes collected by the government on investments and real estate holdings, paid at a time when income is collected. The hypothetical capital gains tax on homes would take away a portion of the price collected by the seller.

“This was never a proposal, it’s a bad idea and we chose to do different things and you can see it in our housing policy,” Vaughan said.

Trudeau announced what stands as the bulk of the Liberals 2019 housing platform yesterday, which includes a promise that the government will expand its first-time homebuyer initiative to help prospective purchasers in Canada’s more pricey market, as part of a list of measures. As well as promising to allow buyers to apply for a 5 or 10 per cent shared equity mortgage with the federal government for homes costing up to $789,000 in areas like Victoria, Vancouver and Toronto, Trudeau also pledged that a re-elected Liberal government would create a national speculation and vacancy tax of one per cent that would be levied annually on properties owned by non-Canadians who don’t live in Canada.

READ MORE: Trudeau pledges expansion of first-time home buyers’ initiative, new foreign speculation tax

In a press release sent to media on Friday, the Conservatives say Vaughan was “heavily involved in housing policy” and “wrote up a plan for (the) 50 per cent tax.”

They also allege that the Liberals want to implement a soda tax, which CBC News reported, as well as keeping secret a plan to raise the carbon tax beyond the price of $50 per tonne that they promised.

Catherine McKenna, who was the Environment Minister until the election was called midway through this week, told The Canadian Press it wouldn’t move beyond $50 per tonne until 2022, but cautioned that the Liberals plan only extended until then. Her inconclusive comments enabled speculation that the Liberals, if in government, would increase the levy higher than the $50 per tonne mark.

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