Brash could be chained to Goff, the upper Labour echelon and the Act party carcas.

It could be called the Bollard coalition – A bunch of weak minded individuals past their best arranged in…

Guppy’s up against the glass after Goff taps the walls of the fish tank – in my view.

With the RWC I think that we could get a…

It's not about that. It's about having a fairer taxation system. Everything else is a bonus.

Some of it is as follows:

The economy will recover and it will be based on better and more sensible infrastructure and Tourism, Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry – these are…

You might be referring to dairy products as only being 25%.

Any non-CGT suggestions for incentivising productive investment rather than houses?

Only about 25% of exports and 7% of the economy overall. Not that you'll hear farmers or the National party owning up to that reality.

He was likely referring to people like Grant Straker, who have been forced to seek overseas VC to successfully export their products because property speculators won’t back them. The local banks,…

Westpac chief economist Dominick Stephens: “New Zealanders are incentivised to borrow money to buy land rather than invest in productive assets. If we introduced a capital gains tax that incentive would be diminished and there would be a greater incentive for people to save via bank deposits or…

It will be able to be…

Say, you have a property

Say, you don't.

This discussion that houses are part of the productive economy feels…

Opposite I guess could be an orange polisher, head-kisser, chest scratcher, front slapper, glove licker, purple noser, door bell, deerer, groupo, hanger-off, kiss-down, pet's teacher's, no-person

The selling off of prime assets like electricity and telecommunications, was it not an admission of managerial incompetence

Managerial incomptence is a symptom of organisational incomptence, we now can say it is a sad condition of all potential organisations, regardless of who owns them.
At least with public ownership there…

I pretty much view anyone who suggests any kind of tax increase whatsoever to be something of a toady (something of, not…

It finally got into Aussie , the goldmine for a local company, which is what we…

And he ignores the fact that it's yet another Kiwi company that's now sending the profits overseas instead of…

So's Matthew Hooten, that well-known socialist sympathiser!

Looking at the roll-call of rabid right-wing commentators who're weighing in to support a CGT, even if it's Labour who introduce it, I can't help but think that this could be the policy that turns it…

But when he talks about Charlie's in the last paragraph he appears to have missed the bit about Labour proposing to extend the tax to the sale of shares and businesses.

His decision to campaign on a capital gains tax is probably the biggest "ask" in New Zealand politics since Ruth Richardson and Jim Bolger mistakenly thought middle New Zealand would tolerate such things as means testing state-funded superannuation…

I find it in often in my work – you run into a scenario where there are professional people…

Well they usually set up camp mid afternoon so probably around then. And Im sure spirit anger would be invoked if someone else's teepee site infringed on yours.…

People have been running multiple houses in little shells at a 10k loss each per year, paying little to no income tax as a result, and making out by flipping on the ups and downs of…

I think its a lack of understanding what is and what isn't cheap rubbish.

Houses aren't regular purchases for most people and when building/buying we don't know what…

My folks have just spent…

I take your point, even though that first part sounds a little odd – I don't think people actually want sub-par housing.

As…

Yeah, you've got to be a little bit careful with those tricksty definitions...

According to legend, Hiarbas, a king in the area…

I'm presuming they meant at noon, when you shadow is directly below you, rather than dawn or dusk, when it can cast all…

Some of the indigenous American tribes believed you…

The…

– CGT regimes usually tax capital gains, but don't allow deductions for capital losses. Yes, that's asymmetrical, but it's a standard asymmetry in the design of CGTs.

– Day traders, and people who buy several houses each year and flick them on quickly, are both engaged…

New Zealanders are poorer than the citizens of half of the other countries in the OECD. Could that be it?

Bullshit. This is all about speculation. Even our farmers are basically farming capital gains. And its…

Just finished listening to this Nine to Noon slot, and a PwC tax partner says that Aus gives a 50% discount on…

Sounds about right. Ian Cassels of the…

I'm not sure you are disagreeing, although "cognitive misers" is inspired.

If you say so. I've got a Lexus 400, and my mate has a Toyota Celsior. Apart from the badge, it's the same car. Well OK, mine's…

Maybe not in manufacturer, but in term of price and luxury there's definitely a choice. I did pick those marques for a reason.

This approach underlay the deregulation to the building industry and the problems it created.

It doesn't even come down to being able to afford quality – people you can afford quality…

Parsimonious culture inherited from certain British peoples (and their demagogues) who viewed frugality as a virtue.

FM

Which is no choice at all, you realize?

True, especially when crap actually gets approved for construction. Overseas, because standards are high, crap just doesn't get built in any significant quantity. Here, we have the choice between crap, or high quality with a significant premium – priced like a choice between…

Not so sure about that. I think Kiwis are weirdly stingy. I can't explain it, really.

BUT – it may be all they can afford...

In part because there's not much experience of what quality housing is like. People don't know any better, so they accept cheap. If…

To be nit-picky, Gareth, we don’t have any policy yet – and I wouldn’t presume the current Labour front bench…

1. Only if they sell. And if we get the property market freeing up because a whole lot of landlords are selling at lower-than-current pries, that's…

You’ve heard of Mondragon?

Five times larger than Telecom NZ. Operating in businesses from supermarkets to white goods. Run on a one person/one vote basis, with an average ratio of maximum to minimum wages of 5:1.

Yes, but hopefully without some of the most toxic of today's baggage, including the associations with Act. Joyce, English, Williamson, they'll all be gone before National is next in power. Key's already made it abundantly clear that he's not prepared to be Leader of the Opposition. They're…

They'll be back, unless we manage truly radical change.

They've got the money, they own the media, they can convince the drones that making people put their name on election material is dictatorial corruption and we should vote for a change. If…

Yeah, nice in theory, impossible in practice on a global scale. And when you're talking about things like…

Yeah, but nah. It's pretty rare for the Minister to…

I think you need to do some reading around the concept of Syndicalism. A true cooperative (which is very different from a company where workers have minority, unequal shareholdings) enables ownership and control to be vested in those with an interest…

When we were doing up our house, we wanted it to be both a pleasant place to live and functional for the foreseeable future.

I recall making a trip…

Interesting. I wonder if it was less about complexity and more about increasing the tax take.

Not at all. They're both good things, but they certainly shouldn't be majorly profitable in themselves. If they are, they're sucking it out of the marrow of the economy that actually produces things.

Just to make it clear…

If you look at that 25 year term say you…

Or we should apply it retrospectively to any property purchased in the last 10 years, instead of just…

NZ is at or near record highs for property prices in proportion to average income. A lot of that is rental property. In Ireland, UK and America they also had similar…

Vodafone (or maybe Telecom) will buy them. They'll take a write off of all those accumulated losses against their taxes (ensuring they avoid any contribution to the community for a year or two). They'll then take a…

Well, in an ideal free market those are both…

But you are right that it is the expectation…

I’d dispute that. We’d be better off with a natural monopoly like telecoms being community owned through something like a worker/customer coop. I’d be happy to see such an enterprise pay negligible tax, as the profits are going to people entitled to them, not wealthy…

So here you are dishing Kiwisaver and investment in managed funds etc??.

What all these guys don't get is that money flowing around and around doesn't make squat. Only production…

That depends on what kind of house you want. When we (very briefly) looked at whether we could buy a house this year, we discovered that there is a pretty good supply of the kind of place which…

Fscking Bono!

Yup. I'm describing very much the conditions that led to the dot-com bubble, but I don't have the answer about how to prevent that – that could very well be one for the famous discipline of the market. That was pretty much what ended up happening.

How is this a cap? It's for the type of company that contrives to book their sales in Ireland to evade paying tax. Or generates bogus interest charges in order to…

Like Myspace,…

Is what I said. Not new businesses. And one could easily envisage an exception for startups of scale, and one for customer/employee cooperatives, which is how enterprises *should* be structured.

Harsh, dude, it's just an idea. But I agree overall, I can't see it being a good idea to ever put caps on how much profit businesses can make. Indeed, I can't see any likely way to "end the corporate culture of tax avoidance". Tax avoidance…

That depends on how much you borrow, of course. If you buy it outright, you're not paying any mortgage. There's a break even point where rentals and mortgages…

And watch new entrants go to the…

Well, it is a little hard to believe when you hear capitalist rhetoric about the virtues of investment, which are all very plausible when it comes to setting up…

It doesn't need to be a conscious thing.

If you have any sort of land intensive business, like a farm or rental property, or even if you buy a…

They need to change and simplify the tax basis of large corporations. Move to a structure where the average profit for each industry is designated (e.g. 25% for telecoms) and applied to the firms sales in NZ + exports from NZ. That's the…

Needless to say, I would be the first to applaud if Goff spend a few minutes on Tuesday laying out Labour’s plan to end the corporate culture of tax avoidance. Because you…

It was repealed by National in 1979.

I'd prefer it was 50% myself for investment, and 30% standard, but there goes me showing my utopian idealism. In this utopia house prices…

The tax avoidance…

The more I read these threads, the more I realise my profound financial naivete. That would never have occurred to me.

This was the fiddle that DexterX never seemed to accept was commonplace in the first thread which…

Yup, that's one of the most crazily dysfunctional parts of the system is that it actually encourages people to lose money. And it's not like that is hard. This…

Because the rent only just keeps up with expenses, since the property is meant to make a loss now and make the owner money at the time of sale. If the…

Possibly, but it's also an exercise in changing the political landscape. I don't see National being willing to reverse out a CGT that's Labour's creation, at least…

Well, yes. Not that long ago, I…

You've considered trading down? It's a common choice for people who have an overvalued house. Sell it, buy something more…

The market will price the future cost into today's rents as fast as they can get away with it – which is pretty much immediately despite any pretence of supply-demand balance.

LOL. Great idea! Let's buy rental property where they already have CGT (or equivalent). I'm not too worried about losing their…

Bored with. Not “bored of”. Why should we take economic advice from someone with all the literacy of Vicky Pollard? Also, how much “talent” does it take to rent a house out?

People are weird.

On cue.

Landlords have already become so afraid of a capital gains tax that an industry leader says they are bowing out of the market.

David Whitburn, president of the Auckland Property Investors Association, said prospective residential investors were spooked by Labour's 15 per cent…

fingers crossed – or it will be a very boring election

It also risks opening up a self-inflicted credibility gap if a CGT (of as yet unknown scope and reach) doesn’t…

Better government is part of the answer

NZ Governments fail to deliver effective frameworks both in legislation and in practice.

Recent major failings are apparent in:
*The Leaky Building crisis
*The collapse of Finance Companies.…

and very much yes- self-builders do have love & attention when building their places-
because we tend to live therein-

mind you, for sheer aesthetic pleasure you wanna…

My house is actually a library (and I love it so) but – things now make it impractical
for me-in-my-60s...but…

For many years little or no insulation, single glazing, crappy kitchens and bathrooms, bad floor plans and bad siting. And a house should be more than just shelter, something not even considered when many are built.
And I havent…

Well, depends. If nothing changes and houses were all worth 20% more, then we'd call that a bubble or inflation, and it would be pointless, mere accounting jiggery-pokery. But…

In any case, the Opposition finally has the…

Otherwise investing in housing rather than business 'produces' bugger all – and even the subsidiary industries could be doing something more useful (and foreign income earning) for our nation.

I think if you people were to invest in businesses who in…

Keir's point I think was that the sector that surrounds our housing stock…

If you buy some machinery or plant that makes widgets... it keeps on…

Labour will announce that soon as well, or my name isn't Hugo Z. Hackenbush.

Yes. I see. I don't normally follow links to kiwiblog, but I'm glad I made an exception there.

now you're singing to the 2% neolib choir :)

See my comment above. That'll answer your question.

I think that actually was the question. And it's just too big for this thread, really a non-sequitur. Nick, given that we have taxes on income/profit in NZ, what reason is there for a strange loophole in this for property investors?

On this logic, why have taxes at all?

In a thread where Nick Kearney has raised his head, I think that borders on trolling.

Keep up the good work :P

I or buy a TV keeping a Harvey Norman salesman(person) in a job (good)?

Or maybe the government could make T.V's and the dude could become a highly paid international modern tradesman. Big Store Retail is hardwork and poorly paid.

M’kay. I need to phrase my response to this very carefully because any suggestion that residential property is an emotionally-weighty but rationally flimsy (IMO and YMMV, of course) fetish object tends to get, well, not exactly troll-ish but definitely troll-adjacent (“panoramic views of bridge from…

No. It only applies if your home gained in value and then only carves off 15% of that gain.

So…

Wishful thinking. One might hope that New Zealanders are slowly realizing that; the best I can say about the media is…

I presume it concedes the need for a roof over your head. If you own a family home and…

Top writing RB. Deb Coddington was sadly out of her depth again, let's be honest economically the depth of the…

Its not. Its a messy compromise to pass the thing -…

Because on the whole they weren't – they were using it as collateral to secure more debt (bad)…

That's a pretty broad (incorrect) statement. There certainly is no CGT, rather there is an Income Tax Act that very loosely includes some forms of gain as income – but certainly not in the usual Commonwealth manner of explicitly stating capital…

Thanks, I was wondering how this might work. You’re not exactly ‘gaining’ if you just briefly realised the equity…

There's no loophole – there is a CGT now.

Why can’t folks just make money, keep it and decide whether to save it (good), pay off debt (good) or buy a…

There is no real difference between CGT on investment properties and CGT on family homes. You could think of it essentially the same way you can think of GST. It would require some juggling of other tax numbers to get the total tax take where it was needed…

It cannot be fair
No haiku needed for this
Only politics

In the long term it would make no difference if the family home was subject to CGT, but it simply isn't possible to implement politically. Which you know…

Well you could argue it is a net income, because it negates the cost of renting a home…

FTR, apart from our own house, none of the family... 'investments' are…

Yeah nah. I get allowing folks to make decisions for themselves. But really? Even the US of A uses capital gains tax. It really really isn't that big a deal.

Capital gains is a way…

Only if you sell. Hold it, take the rents. It's a good system – it's not like there aren't heaps of people in Oz who have made a mega fortune in property.…

Oh yeah, +1 (for…

The South Africans just set their CGT rate at 15%, far lower than their income tax rates, and didn't bother with inflation adjustment. Simplifies things, and the lower rate helps compensate for the inflation effect. Or, as Ben suggests, we could follow as and index, but…

If we follow the Ozzie model, it will be inflation adjusted. So buy-and-holders don't pay much CGT. It really targets trading.

BTW, I'm having a few issues understanding the nature of the Higgs Boson – would you be able to provide explanations?

Or it can balance the books. That would be good for the economy.

The Government getting $15k*1 doesn't buy…

There…

Sorry, I'll never buy that. *Rich* pricks spend…

I guess they're targeting investment property. It is also exactly how it's done in Oz.

Instead she gushes…

If you own a business and apply your energy and talents to make a profit, you pay company tax on that profit (28c in the dollar).
If you work hard as an employee – say as a…