Nick Nurse brought Canada its only NBA championship to date. How did Ontario reward him? With a roughly $700,000 tax bill tied to the Toronto-area home he bought while coaching the Raptors.
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The dispute centers on a $4.65 million home the couple purchased in Mississauga in October 2021. At the time, the Nurses paid $697,500 in Ontario’s Non-Resident Speculation Tax, or NRST, a 15% levy then imposed on certain residential purchases by foreign nationals in the Greater Golden Horseshoe.
Nick Nurse, an American citizen, had been working in Ontario since joining the Raptors in 2013. He became the team’s head coach in 2018 and led Toronto to its first NBA championship in 2019. He left the Raptors in April 2023 to become head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers. The Nurses sold the Mississauga property in September 2023 and applied for an NRST rebate in March 2024.
Ontario rejected the application the following month, saying the couple did not qualify because they were no longer living in the home at the time of the application. The Ministry of Finance reaffirmed that decision in April 2026. That reasoning is now at the heart of the court fight.
The Nurses argue that the NRST rules, in effect, when they bought the property and applied for the rebate, did not require them to continue living in the home until the application date.
Their position is that the rules allowed eligible foreign buyers to apply for a rebate within four years of the purchase, provided they met the other requirements.
Their lawyer, Mike Collinge of Deloitte Legal Canada, says the province is effectively applying a later version of the law to an earlier transaction.
“I think it’s a case where they changed the law after Mr. Nurse made his rebate application and then they’re reading a requirement into the law retroactively when the legislation itself was not retroactive.”
Another lawyer comes in support of Nick Nurse
The rules were tightened shortly after the Nurses filed their application. Under the newer framework, foreign buyers seeking the rebate must also become permanent residents within four years of purchasing the property.
Now, Nick Nurse would not qualify under those revised requirements. But the couple says the sale was driven by Nurse’s move to Philadelphia, not by real estate speculation.
Their court filing argues that they “were not the type of real estate speculators the Legislature aimed to address” and points to Nurse’s decade of professional and economic contributions to Ontario.
The case has also drawn criticism of the province’s handling of the rebate from another tax lawyer, David Rotfleisch, who is not involved in the litigation.
“It sounds like an unfortunately common scenario where they’re acting as cowboys, making up the law as they go along,” Rotfleisch said.
The lawyer added that, while no court outcome is guaranteed, “on the face of it, there seems to be no basis for the denial, so it should be a slam dunk for the taxpayer.”
