Reselling your Blue Jays tickets? Here’s what the CRA wants to know

Jamie Golombek attends Game Two of the World Series with his daughter, Sarah, on Oct. 25 at Rogers Centre in Toronto. Photo by Jamie Golombek

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The hottest commodity in Toronto this Halloween weekend wasn’t a Labubu costume but coveted Toronto Blue Jays World Series tickets. This is the first time the Jays have made it to the World Series since 1993.

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As I write this column, the cheapest seats in the Rogers Centre for Friday’s Game Six, way up in the 500 level, in deep, deep right field, were going on online seller StubHub for just under $3,000 a piece, with prices expected to climb as gametime approaches. The face value on these tickets, however, is significantly less, meaning that lucky ticketholders who secured tickets to the fall classic can potentially sell their tickets for a substantial profit.

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Which begs the question: How is the profit on the sale of Jays tickets taxed? For me, this question is not merely academic, but personal as I have World Series tickets. Let me explain.

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As a lifelong Blue Jays fan, I have fond memories of attending games as a teen at Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium, sitting in the $2 bleachers’ benches on a Sunday afternoon, where our seats, which faced the wrong direction, were so far away we could barely see the diamond.

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In 1992, when the Jays first won the World Series, I was a budding young accountant, fresh out of university and starting my first job at a large international accounting firm on Bay Street. Neither I nor any of my friends could afford playoff tickets, so we gathered around the 20-inch colour TV in my bachelor pad to watch the Jays win the World Series. We did the same thing in 1993.

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Fast forward to 2015, when I decided to take the plunge and bought Jays season tickets in the upper deck. It allowed me to take my kids to the legendary 2015 Bautista bat flip game and attend the Jays’ playoff run again in 2016. I’ve hung on to my season tickets ever since, upgrading my seat locations a few times over the past decade. So, when the Jays finally made the World Series this year for the first time in 32 years, the opportunity to attend a World Series game in person, rather than sell my tickets, was, as Mastercard put it, “Priceless.”

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But, what if I did sell my tickets for a profit, how would it ultimately be taxed?

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Readers may recall I first tackled this subject last year in the context of Taylor Swift tickets, so here’s a quick refresher. For most people, other than professional ticket-resellers who make it their business to buy and sell tickets at a profit, Jays tickets are likely to be considered capital property, meaning that the profit from a resale of tickets would be treated as a capital gain. That is, the proceeds received from the sale, less the cost of the tickets (the adjusted cost base or ACB) would be a capital gain. Capital gains are 50 per cent taxable, meaning that even someone in the top tax bracket of 53 per cent in Ontario would pay a maximum top rate of about 26 per cent capital gains tax on their Jays ticket profits.

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But there are some special rules for the sale of what is known as “personal-use property” (PUP). PUP refers to items that you own primarily for your or your family’s personal use or enjoyment, such as personal and household items including furniture, cars, boats, a cottage and other similar assets. One could make the case that Jays tickets are PUP since they are for the purchaser’s personal use.