Posts by Alfie
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to mark taslov,
I’m not sure how to write policy for New Zealand, but there’s a sense that everyone get’s a bit nervy when people start debating this, someone mentions Chinese, someone calls someone a racist.
Notice how I cleverly avoiding accusations of xenophobia by refering to Belgium? ;-)
There are lots of examples of countries successfully restricting land sales to foreigners. Some of these refer to larger blocks of land but the principle is the same.
Sri Lanka - 100% tax on the sale of land to foreigners
Australia - Foreigners prohibited from buying existing housing stock
South Africa - no land sales to foreignersIt is possible to pass legislation which puts off speculators without scaring kiwis who own baches. Recent polls on farm sales suggest that the majority of kiwis support this approach. It comes down to how well you sell the message; something which Labour failed at spectacularly.
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to mark taslov,
It's not about the monetary figure, it's simply about the principle.
I understand what you're saying Mark. But a better example might take a foreign investor... the classsic Belgian dentist will do. He has loads of spare cash and buys 5 homes in Auckland for $800k* each. He rents them out but his declared outgoings exceed the rental income so he pays no tax on that money. Three years later he flicks them on for a mill each and pockets $1m in cash, tax free. Thanks New Zealand!
* These figures are off the top of my head
While the Nats successfully put the frighteners on those who own or aspire to family cribs (or "baches" if you live north of Oamaru), it's the big money people who are distorting our housing market and they are the people a CGT should be targeting.
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Buy a holiday home for $300k, sell it later for (say) $400k... you only pay 15% of the CAPITAL GAIN, not the sale price. In other words you'd pay $15k.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Euan Mason,
David Cunliffe is a good man, but he didn’t connect with voters and couldn’t foot it with JK, the master media manipulator. For the good of NZ he needs to resign as leader.
The Herald quote says it all.
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I feel pretty much the way I do when the All Blacks lose.
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Trevor Nicholls,
I wonder if some of what we've seen here is that fair play spirit working to defend the local boy against the attacks of a suspect foreigner.
With a good deal of media support for that view.
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Scott Yorke is running a funny series of absolutely non-political posts today.
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Steve Barnes,
They legalised pot down there?
Back in the sixties I seem to remember. Oh wait... that's a local secret and we're not supposed to tell anyone. ;-)
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to David Hood,
But I would walk uphill both ways in the snow to vote tomorrow.
The good news for Dunedinites is that while snow to 500m is predicted later, we have wonderful blue skies and sunshine at the moment. It's a shorts and jandals day so there's no reason we shouldn't have a high turnout. Happy voting people!
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Russell Brown,
Surely no more than a public flogging?
Only if the Conservatives reach the 5% threshold.
