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Te wiki o te tāke; The New Zealand Tax Podcast – shots fired in the debate over the true tax burden in New Zealand, and lessons from FATCA

Personal Finance / analysis
Te wiki o te tāke; The New Zealand Tax Podcast – shots fired in the debate over the true tax burden in New Zealand, and lessons from FATCA
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The tax week has been dominated by a report prepared by the Sapere Research Group on the effective tax rates imposed on the income of New Zealand residents.

This report was commissioned by the tax advisory firm OliverShaw and has been released ahead of two reports coming out next week, one from Inland Revenue on the tax and effective economic income of high wealth individuals in New Zealand and the other from Treasury on the effective tax rate of New Zealanders across the income and wealth distributions.

As you may recall, the Inland Revenue project reviewing the net wealth of the 400 richest families in New Zealand has been highly controversial and generated quite a bit of pushback from the outset. There were mutterings about court actions to prevent the proposal going ahead, although as far as I'm aware, none of those have ever eventuated.

Nevertheless, the controversy prompted OliverShaw to commission a report because, as they say in the Foreword of the report:

“From what has been said about the methodology of the Inland Revenue study, it seems that the Inland Revenue and Treasury studies may use different methodologies. A comparison of two different studies using different methodologies could easily produce a misleading and confusing picture of our tax system.

Moreover, the Inland Revenue methodology seems inconsistent with OECD and academic effective tax rate studies….We therefore considered it important to have a study that uses a more consistent approach to estimate the effective tax rates that are imposed on the incomes of low, medium and high wealth households rather than just high wealth individuals.”

That's the rationale that OliverShaw gave for the project. Incidentally the Oliver in OliverShaw, is Robin Oliver, a former Deputy Commissioner of Inland Revenue and a member of the last Tax Working Group. So, he speaks with a lot of authority. You will also recall Oliver was one of three members of the Tax Working Group who produced a dissenting opinion on the proposal for a comprehensive capital gains tax.

Worth keeping in mind, however, that Oliver and the other two dissenters, Kirk Hope and Joanne Hodge did agree with the rest of the group in extending the taxation of residential investment properties. This probably should be kept in mind amongst all controversy the Sapere Research Group report has produced.

The report, to put it mildly, is massive, it runs to a total of 267 pages, in three parts. There's a foreword from OliverShaw, followed by a detailed outline of the report. And finally, the report itself, which breaks down into five sections, an introduction, an overview of New Zealand's tax and benefit systems, the effective tax rates estimates, section four then interprets and applies these effective tax rate estimates. And finally, there is the conclusion in section five.

So it is colossal and to be honest, I haven't yet got my head around all that’s in here. It’s certainly, as I've heard one or two other experts say a report that merits rereading as often is the case when you're processing this much data. As far as I can recall nothing like this was prepared for the Tax Working Group. (No doubt some will correct me if I'm wrong on that).

It's an extensive piece of research and its conclusions are a little controversial, because in essence, they appear to be saying that the average effective tax rate paid by the wealthy is not far off that paid by other middle-income earners.

By the way, the classification of what is middle-income is something that perhaps might provoke some pushback. Low income is seen as under $48,000, which is the threshold at which the income tax rate increases from 17.5% to 30%. Medium-wealth households are described as those that derive annual net real economic incomes between $48,000 and $500,000. High wealth, high income households are those deriving net real economic incomes in excess of $500,000.

That medium-income upper threshold of $500,000 seems pretty high to me. But no doubt the statisticians and others have got a reasonable background on it.

As I said, there's so much in this report to digest that it's possibly the reason why there's a fair bit of confusion about what it is really driving at. In summarizing the report’s conclusions Robin Oliver commented;

“One of the questions asked is whether the very wealthy pay taxes at the same or higher rate than middle income earners…This research shows clearly that, whether you consider taxable income or other measures, such as economic income, the answer is: ‘Yes, they do.’ “

That certainly raised a few eyebrows around the place, including that of Craig Elliffe, another member of the last tax working group. And if you want a good critique of the report and where some of the issues are going to be explored further, The Spinoff has a very good article in which they spoke to Craig Elliffe at length on the matter.

For myself I'm still digesting the report. As I said, it's massive and a significant amount of data to absorb. So, I'm not so keen to rush to judgement. Certainly, that conclusion that Robin Oliver cited surprised me. On the other hand, when he was interviewed for Newstalk ZB, he did point out that there's a real problem with the tax rate jumping from 17.5% to
30%, around the $48,000 threshold.

Indeed, one of the conclusions of the report is arguably the highest effective tax rates are paid by those on the lowest incomes once you take into consideration the impact of abatement of benefits.

Getting your retaliation in first?

The report has generated a lot of controversy, which appears to be the deliberate intention of OliverShaw. It certainly follows the motto adopted by the 1974 Lions captain Willie John McBride when they were about to play the Springboks “Let's get our retaliation in first”.

I'm therefore going to withhold further comment on the report until I've seen the reports from Inland Revenue and Treasury. We’ll then be looking at three very comprehensive reports and I'm sure a clearer picture will emerge as from these reports once they considered as a whole.

Still, it's good to see tax in the news. I think generally we don't talk seriously enough about tax. Politicians will fence around the topic talking in slogans, but the nature of what we tax, and how we tax is incredibly important. As I've said repeatedly in the past, I am concerned that we're facing significant fiscal challenges from climate change and changing demographics. Our tax system has to be seen to be robust enough to meet those demands.

Does that mean, as the economist Cameron Bagrie suggested recently, we may need to be raising taxes? All of that is up for consideration. So, a debate around what's taxed and who pays what is very good to see. And I look forward to engaging more in that debate.

Lessons from FATCA?

Moving on, as noted above, one of the controversies about the Separe report and in general is over the question of the true economic income of the highest net worth New Zealanders. And the controversy really arises because we don't know very much. Data is scarce on this topic and that generally bedevils tax policy and tax revenue authorities around the world and has done for a long period of time.

A report from the United States this week looks at the data obtained as a result of the highly controversial Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA.

 If you recall, this was introduced in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, and it required banks and financial institutions in overseas jurisdictions to provide data to the United States Internal Revenue Service (“the IRS”), regarding foreign wealth held by United States citizens in those foreign jurisdictions.

To recap, the United States requires all its citizens, whether or not they are living in the United States, to file tax returns. As part of those filings, they are required to provide details of all overseas financial bank accounts. FATCA is an incredibly important piece of legislation, probably one of the most important pieces of tax legislation in the last decade, because it became the genesis of the OECD's Common Reporting Standards on the Automatic Exchange of Information. 

Following the introduction of FATCA. Other jurisdictions thought, “Well, if our financial institutions have to supply this information to the United States, it would be handy if we also knew exactly which of our citizens and tax residents had wealth overseas.” So that was the genesis of the Common Reporting Standards (“the CRS”).

The IRS, together with the United States National Bureau of Economic Research, have just released a report which pulls together all the data so far provided to the IRS since 2015, when FATCA took full effect.

 This has enabled the IRS and therefore the United States government to get a clearer handle on what wealth is held offshore and by whom.

According to the report, around 1.5 million US taxpayers hold foreign financial accounts. The total value of those is around US$4 trillion as of the year ended 31st December 2018.

Just for comparison, the total financial assets of the US households amounted to roughly US$80 trillion in 2022. What is of particular interest to the IRS is about one in seven of these overseas accounts are held in jurisdictions usually considered tax havens such as Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands, but those accounts total nearly US$2 trillion. The report's authors conclude that this indicates accounts in tax havens are, on average, larger.

Another point of interest is the ratio of tax haven assets to GDP is estimated to be about 10%. That was higher than previously estimated. The implication is that financial assets in tax havens may have grown significantly faster than the overall U.S. economy since 2007, which is that baseline for that previous estimated ratio of tax havens wealth to GDP.

The FATCA data is enabling the IRS to get a better idea of who holds overseas assets. It appears that more than 60% of the individuals in the top 0.01% of the income distribution in the United States own foreign accounts, either directly or indirectly. What also happens is that the proportion owning offshore accounts rises as the incomes deciles rises. This apparently ties in with literature, which says that there's a strong correlation between the wealthier a person is, the more wealth is held offshore.

Now this data is prepared for the United States and comes out of FATCA, but I expect Inland Revenue would be mining the data it's receiving through the Common Reporting Standards.

And it might be that we might see some of those findings reflected in next week's reports. It doesn't surprise me, by the way, that the wealthier a person is, the more wealth is likely to be held offshore because wealthier persons will seek to diversify their asset holdings.

That's a natural response and shouldn’t necessarily be seen as being sinister. But whatever the reason, it's interesting to see what the IRS has gathered so far from its data.

And of course, it will be interesting to see how they respond to that data. Of course, they'll certainly get pushback from the Republican Congress on that. But that's politics and taxes, they go hand in hand. I’m curious to see what, if any, reference to CRS data comes out of next week's Treasury and Inland Revenue reports.

New Inland Revenue guidance on the bright-line test and family transactions

And finally, this week, and also connected to our main story, Inland Revenue has released some guidance in relation to the bright-line test and family transactions. Now this particular Interpretation Statement IS 23/02 is very specific.

It applies to the application of the five year bright-line test, that is where the land was purchased between 29th March 2018 when the bright-line test period increased from 2 to 5 years and, 27th March 2021 when the bright-line period was further extended to ten years. As is now usual, the interpretation statement is accompanied by a useful six-page fact sheet.

The Interpretation Statement covers scenarios where parents are assisting children or other close relatives with buying first homes, a partner is added to the title of residential land and where land is inherited under a will which is then on-sold to other beneficiaries.

Generally speaking, if you sell residential land to a family member or partner within the bright-line period, that potentially will trigger a taxable charge. That may also be the case if the land is gifted or sold below market value. On the other hand, if residential land inherited under a will is sold to other beneficiaries under that will, that sale would be exempt from the bright-line test. However, any subsequent sale by those recipients to a third party within the relevant bright-line period would be taxable.

Inland Revenue have promised to release separate guidance on this issue of transactions between family members in relation to the ten-year bright-line period, and that will be considerably more involved.

Something which comes up repeatedly and lies at the heart of the controversy surrounding the Sapere report are the implications of the lack of a comprehensive capital gains tax. At the moment, it results in distortions where someone's economic wealth rises without being subject to tax, whereas in other cases an equivalent rise in value may be taxed because of a different set of circumstances. The various iterations of the bright line test are a good example of this frankly, incoherent approach.

That's all for this week. Next week we'll be looking in detail at the Treasury and Inland Revenue reports on tax and economic incomes of New Zealanders and how their conclusions and methodologies compare with those in the Sapere report.

Until then, I’m Terry Baucher and you can find this podcast on my website or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening and please send me your feedback and tell your friends and clients. Until next time, kia pai to rā. Have a great day.


*Terry Baucher is an Auckland-based tax specialist with 25 years experience. He works with individuals and entities who have complex tax issues. Prior to starting his own business, he spent six years with one of the "Big Four' accountancy firms including a period advising Australian businesses how to do business in New Zealand. You can contact him here.

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60 Comments

There's two significant issues with raising more tax:

1) The Crown has been increasing revenues by default for the last decade or so with no political mandate by neglecting indexation of the tax brackets. An increase now in real terms on the basis of future fiscal challenges would be saying the quiet part out loud - that the state has sustained itself through tax increases that it had no political mandate for.

2) Households are being slugged with aggressive increases in basics such as food and childcare, after years of exploding house prices. Many will feel aggrieved that they will have to do without even more in the future in the face of arguable central government largesse.

Finally, there are some (myself included) who, conscious of the ever-increasing government revenues, inflation and pressure on households, are wondering whether we are actually what our taxes supposedly support. Roads, rails, hospitals and schools are all in a perilous state. There seems to have been significant breach of the social contract between taxpayers and the state that will need addressing before formal increases in tax rates can even be considered. At the moment, it seems like a case of good money after bad. 

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The question you might to ask is have we ever in the past paid enough taxes to get the services we have enjoyed till now or have we been kidding ourselves by purchasing from the future. PDK. Which now means to progress we have to extra.

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If that is the case, then it should have been put to the electorate. Not only has it not been put to the electorate, the Finance Minister cynically suggests indexing is a 'tax cut', which is an inherently dishonest argument given that he reappointed an RBNZ Governor who has, let's be frank, failed in the control of the inflation that the government and RBNZ requires to be present in the economy.

To not index tax brackets is the government having its cake and eating it too. If it were honest about the actual need to fund services, it would have to effectively admit how much it's been stealthily taking a bigger slice of the pie by design, so I'm guessing it won't happen.

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We've certainly been relying on what was built in the past and not maintaining the same level of infrastructure development or even repairing the infrastructure. Pioneers had to work bloody hard and long without the modern machines. Anyway that's a bit off topic. Its also good to see less of the tokenistic te reo on the screen

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All Govts waste far too much of other peoples money on keejerks, vanity projects,  failed deliveries & buying their constituencies dependency.

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The government never spends other peoples money, we spend the governments money as it is the currency issuer and taxpayers are not. The government issues its currency when it spends and it deletes it again when it taxes us. (MMT).

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I suggest you've gone too far off the reservation there TL. While the Government may be the sovereign owner of the NZ$, it has abrogated it's control of it. But part in parcel with that when it assigns the NZ$ as the currency of preference in NZ, it thereby also gives license to people and organisations to 'own' a quantity of it. That in itself is not a license to create the currency. That 'ownership' is achieved through earning.

But in abrogating its control of the currency, the government is turning a blind eye to the private banks effectively creating currency through it's lending practices. In doing this the private banks are to all intents and purposes hijacking the proceeds of future economic activity, which should be to the benefit of the country and Government, not the banks.

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We should start by insisting on more effective government before we raise taxes.

We complain about politicians but the government department that support the them is where the long term rot sits. Look at the Health sector with thousands of duplicated management and support roles. Rob Campbell seemed to be making progress but he gets rolled out at the first opportunity. Education department has done a great job in lowering education standards and aspirations. Don’t let’s get started on the millions wasted on consultants.

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Quite right NoRegrets. The current Government have increased staff numbers over 15% and have provided zero outcomes for that increase. We could start by cutting those staff forthwith, then starting on the remainder via a sinking lid. Government should get rid of various departments immediately. Ministry for Pacific Peoples, Ministry for Women, Te Puni Kokiri, Pike River Recovery Agency and Social Well Being Agency to start with. Tax should never be increased, the Government should live within its means.

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So.. it's not the increasingly unhealthy & ageing public creating excess demand and strain across all parts of the health system?

“A key opportunity to improve health and well-being is through prevention. The report highlights that over a third of health loss is potentially preventable by addressing common risk factors in the population

https://www.health.govt.nz/news-media/news-items/global-burden-disease-…

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Lol Echaton, ageing is nothing new, being unhealthy is a choice. If you are unhealthy, say obese, dig into your own wallet to get health care. After all, if you are obese, you haven't thought twice about spending plenty to tuck in. And guess what? It doesn't matter how much you tell people not to be stupid, stupid people will always do stupid things. 

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Most elderly have an increased lifespan, but not increased healthspan.

Most people do not 'dig into their own wallet' to fund their health care needs.

I hear many people blaming the system/government, its always someone else's fault. 

Reality is - demand needs to be addressed urgently.

 

 

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A capital gains tax would allow income tax to be lowered. I quite like the look of the Irish system, exempts farming and other productive gains, and the family/  occupied homes.

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What are you smoking ?. Name a tax that has been lowered! Ever!

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How old are you ? Not old enough to remember the 66% top tax rate?

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Tax tax tax, how about they stop wasting money! It will never be enough because of these trough feeders. A road crossing costs tens of thousands these days, totally ridiculous. If you wish to give all your money to the government well go right ahead.

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I agree.  I was watching an interesting program about the State of Pennsylvania.  They had to replace 515 unsafe bridges in 3 years.  Their answer - commonality of design, all drawings being sent via ipads on site to facilitate changes, commonality of components, etc.  A standard bridge there now takes 60-75 days TOTAL to complete.  Reminds me of the old Ministry of Works model, but we have gone to consultants, studies, over-runs - how is this efficient?

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Kiwirail did a similar thing rebuilding the Northland line.

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Old and wise enough to know we live in different times and with huge debt!

So I say again.. when was the last time taxs dropped ( in the modern era/ error  we live in) and not in some old time honorable  governance time,!

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Shaft

Your comment was “Ever”

Get over it. 

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Perhaps not tax, but the introduction of interest free student loans may somewhat meet the benchmark on that one

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Around 35 years ago Roger Douglas initiated the transition to consumption taxes - GST. The quid pro quo for the original electoral mandate for this change was reduced income tax rates & the removal of historical economic  inefficiencies such as stamp duties & envy taxes such as death duties/wealth taxes.

Of course a couple of generations later, both Govts with dependent constituencies and people with conveniently short memories & long envy want to have their cake and eat it.

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Douglas wanted 15% GST and flat taxes at 15% on income. The irony being that we ended up selling most of the Crown assets we probably would have needed to sell anyway during the liquidity crunch in the late 1980s but without the tax reform and benefits that would have come with it.

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Proportional income tax ("flat tax") is a lot fairer than Progressive. Unless you're an envious socialist.

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Wasn't it 12% and no personal income tax? But that Government and everyone since has broken the promise that GST represented, proving the greed of the politicians.

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IIRC Douglas proposed 20% proportional income tax. Lange asked for a cup of tea.

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I couldn't agree more. The underlying problem with NZ's tax system is it is too narrow. Because we don't have a CGT or LVT we have to have higher GST, income and company taxes that we otherwise would require to compensate for having no CGT or LVT. This is damaging to the real economy. Nothing will change though.....

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The exemption for  family/occupied homes is massively distortionary. It should be dropped.

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A number of commentators on this website believe CGT is just to fill govt coffers and put a brake on housing speculation. It is neither. CGT on houses has not put a brake on housing. There are numerous other countries where CGT  does not curb speculation/investment in housing.  CGT is to level, as far as possible, a persons investment decision. Why the hell should I pay CGT every year on un-realised capital gains on many shares and there are no capital gains on housing? Don't mention the bright line test, its a half cocked capital gain.  I exclude the family home from this. I see it as a place to live in, not to achieve capital gains.

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Thanks for giving the 2 upcoming reports some context Terry. Very helpful. 

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When you put a capital gains tax on anything -what Happens next?

The prices of "said taxed goods" goes up accordingly.

 

So be careful for what you wish for.? Eg - cheap houses!!!

Labour Governments are very good at taking every opportunity to remove all avenues for making money.

This in turn drives more kiwis to find more elaborate ways to earn coin.. such as ram raids, ,drugs, etc  and more crime etc.

Labour= " we know what is best for you"

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A CGT will lower house prices. Prices are currently set by what a property speculator will pay. They will pay less if we have a CGT. Further a CGT would enable us to lower income taxes as revenue from a CGT could be offset against income taxes in a tax revenue neutral way. This means that the after tax income of home owners will increase. So first home buyers will benefit from both falling house prices and an increase in after tax incomes. Apply a stamp duty on property speculators and then you could lower income taxes even further...

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No it won’t. House prices are driven by interest rates. Interest rates down, house prices up up and away. The reserve bank regulates the price of money and are responsible for the issue and carnage that’s about to hit.

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The problem with any transactional tax, be it CGT or SDuty, is that if volumes fall to, say, nil, so does the tax collection. Much better to tax what doesn't transact, on an annual basis, and ensure reliable tax flow - Land Tax. (And, No. Council rate aren't a Land Tax already)

Land Tax also encourages the thinking that "The lower the price I pay for the property (land component), the less annual tax I pay"

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Agreed. CGT is rendered useless if you don't sell. According a land tax is simpler, regular and almost impossible to avoid. All important points for regular Govt cashflow.

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Bollocks! Pay a tax on a theoretical, unrealised 'value'? Who would decide what that value is? The only true value of an item, irrespective of the market is that transacted between a willing seller and a willing buyer. What you're spouting is nothing more than an envy tax.

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Heard of rateable values for local tax? They call it another name.

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It's the only way central government has allowed local government to fund it's services. and it has turned into a rort as local government clearly views their rate payers as bottomless pits of funding, with little or no accountability. Give any bureaucrat the power to raise taxes and greed is the only guaranteed result.

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A CGT won't produce any revenue if house prices lower. So you'll end up with a CGT on the books and income taxes at prior levels. Given the government has not adjusted their tax rates as the tax take blew out with increased GST on higher prices within the economy, I think you can safely assume there is literally zero change of a rebalancing in the event CGT revenues later rose in addition to income taxes collected. Plus, as pointed out, if credit is easily available and population pressure continues to be imported, vendors will simply price in any expected losses from capital gains accordingly. 

I do like the idea of stamp duties though, that should scale with each additional property owned (e.g. 1 = 0, 2 = 1%, 3 = 2%, 4 = 4%, 5 = 8% and so on). 

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The reason we got rid of "clipping the ticket" rorts such as stamp duties decades ago is that they are economically inefficient/negative including significantly restricting labour flexibility. 

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Of course, there were literally no downsides to housing becoming the de facto retirement scheme for a generation that then priced subsequent ones out of owning  a family home, were there?

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My comment was about stamp duty, not your strawman housing distraction.

I also remember that the Govt a couple of decades or so ago specifically told NZdrs they'd have to plan to fund their own retirement.

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We dropped stamp duties decades ago. You can debate-police me all you want, it's simply not relevant and snarking won't change that. 

As for the second: extreme citation needed. There is zero indication about whether super will be available to current workers or not. That's a hugely material amount of money per week for someone now working to suddenly have to save to cover in their retirement, and probably not possible for a significant portion of the population either way.

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If what you say about CGT lowering house prices is true, then why have house prices risen to unaffordable levels in the UK which has both CGT & stamp duty? Your claim doesn't seem to stack up!

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No it won't, if house prices are going down you will pay 0, CGT. When its going up its still profitable so why wouldn't you still invest, sure you will have to pay tax but as long as that tax is reasonable it won't stop investing. People don't stop working because they are taxed, or say its not worth earning more if you hit the higher tax bracket.

Why people are property crazy here is that they believe its safe and they can leverage it with low interest rates. If people could borrow to buy shares, and they truly trusted the share market to always go up there would be wild speculation their too. It would far more profitable I believe share prices go up faster than house prices in general.

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House prices ae 100% governed by how much a seller sells his house for.

 

End of 

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🤣🤣

I think they mean the general HPI prices

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Tax what you want less of. Subsidise what you want more of. 

Just need to take a look at our welfare polices to see that in action.

 

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MMT is doing that right now. Raising, increasing the revenue(s) for the Crown.

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MMT is purely a description of how the finances of governments with their own sovereign currencies operate and it tells us how the NZ Governments finances have functioned since the NZ Dollar was floated in 1984 but it is not a policy or a prescription as such, that is always up to the decisions that the government itself decides upon and our government cannot decide to adopt or reject MMT or otherwise.  

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Capital gains tax is already forced onto certain assets, crypto for example in NZ but housing, not so much.
 

We either have capital gains on all assets and create level tax field for asset tax or we have no capital gains on any assets.

Currently the IRD are breaking their own rules by applying capital gains on one asset and not another. 

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Its actually factored in via gst in many instances. Not homes of course, but many 'hobby' farmers who have claimed the gst on their 'farm' have found this out the hard way when they sell up (or cut a section off for the kids). And so on.

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I totally agree with this comment, if you introduce a CGT it should be on everything you buy and sell and make profit on, maybe anything over $5000  if you buy a house for $500000 and sell it for $1000000 , if you buy a farm for $2000000 and sell it for $4000000  if you buy a piece of art for $20000 and sell it for $40000 if you buy a collectors car for $50000 and sell it for $1M should not just be for property investors only,,,,, make the CGT tax a flat rate of 15% and people rearly won’t mind paying it, 

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Astounding that the iwi fat cats arn't brought into this. They grow from the handouts and grow again from a tax free status. Something needs to be done as they will be the main providers for pensions and heathcare etc as most professions leave for ozzy.

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its gunna be epic!!

the rich will be stuck in NZ with no health care, education for the kids, workers to run the restaurants, dog groomers, ...

Meanwhile over in Aussie....

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We want to live a first world lifestyle and standards with not many truely profitable 1st world business models and a lot of low paid jobs, by first world standards.

We are a long way from anywhere - even Australia, by European and USA standards, making trade and travel hard and expensive.

Our small base and long skinny geography makes infrastructure very hard and costly to build and maintain.

We have a great landscape and outdoors stuff - if you have the money to enjoy it - and is the main reason people stay here or come back.

Unlike Scandanavian countries, which we like to think we can mimic, we hate following rules and all try to avoid tax like the plague.

Our number 8 wire mentality, making something work - just - is our downfall - imagine the Swiss operating under that model.

Until we decide we want to follow some rules, understand our true place in the world, get some national long term plans together on infrastructure etc and then have a fair funding model we will just muddle along as usual. 

Those with enough money will enjoy the scenery and activities - afford private health care - and have the ability to move if needed.

Im not holding my breath.

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Bravo  jack lumber... a Superb summation!

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Well said but you already know we will just continue to muddle along. Its up to the individual to decide whether or not they want to get out of the muddle, its not easy but it can be done.

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Always enjoy Terry's weekly accounts. He's right. Tax is an important issue, so it is better if we get it right. Even more so considering the rapidly changing demographics in today's brave new world.

I have been following the double-Labour PM Aussie stories over the past week with interest (no pun intended). It's not easy living in the shadow of Australia. They are up there in the top ten easily. We are struggling to make the top 30 these days, and slipping.

NZ in the 21st century may have a whiff of the Irish 19th century story to it, except it won't be famine that starts it, it will be the foolishness of the stupid socialist elites that drive it into the ground. The post-modernists have a lot to answer for that's for sure. Either way, many have left & many will leave, as the already huge & getting larger economic gap continues to open up. I'd go tomorrow if my wife would agree, but it's no fun on your own.

And I keep looking at their huge energy generation needs, with three-quarters of that still being coal fired. The only good news here is that they have heaps of coal, but that will be (and is already?) increasingly frowned upon by those who think they know better.

They also have huge deposits of uranium, lithium & many other rare earths.

They are also embarking on their own indigenous journey which as we all know, is not much fun. It can be hard to help people when they refuse to help themselves.

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Yay... robin hood socialism....!

What has happened to our social welfare, housing supplement budgets over the last 10 years?

They create inflation through printing massive amounts of money, then get us to pay for it through higher costs of living and no wage growth,

Then want to find ways to increase taxes to pay for their own inability to manage their own government spending

Governments are the only entity that does not have to balance their own budgets, because they have the printing press and pass the cost on to everyone else... just saying

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