Look, I don’t wish to be overtly critical of the mainstream news media, I appreciate the pressure of banging out a dozen stories while self editing them from your selfie stick camera, but the lack of critical analysis by the Political Media at criticising National’s Tax Policy just isn’t acceptable.
Firstly, the Real Estate Pimps are pouring millions in donations to National!
Secondly, National will give Landlords the right to kick tenants out with no reason!
Thirdly, many National MPs are property owners who will directly benefit from these plans!
Fourthly, they intend to remove the foreign buyer ban on property pricing the next generation out of home ownership!
Fifthly, the $250 tax cut per fortnight is for rich landlords is funded by robbing 2 year olds!
Sixthly, the $250 tax cut per fortnight is for rich landlords is funded by stealing from climate change budgets!
Seventhly, the $250 tax cut per fortnight is for rich landlords is funded by mutilating Public Transport!
Eighthly , the revenue raised won’t cover any of this!
Ninthly, the vast majority won’t get any of that $250 per fortnight!
The math doesn’t add up and the entire thrust of robbing the poor to pay for the rich is an obscenity, the Political Media have a greater obligation and responsibility to spell this out to voters and they aren’t!
It’s a shallow analysis that doesn’t serve our democracy well!
Think I’m being biased because I am a Lefty? Here’s Right Wing Head of Slytherin House Matthew Hooton behind the Herald Paywall…
National concedes savings alone won’t fund its tax cuts, so also announced four new taxes. None applies to tax-exempt “charities” such as Go Bus, Shotover Jet, Sanitarium and Mission Estate Winery.
The first new tax, which National developed with assistance from Auckland’s Sky City Casino, is on offshore gambling websites. Labour says it already taxes them, collecting nearly $40 million a year in GST.
The second new tax is charging foreigners higher visa fees.
These two would raise a few hundred million dollars.
The third is bigger, which is reversing Labour’s Covid-era tax break for commercial property investors, forecast to raise just over $2b over the next four years.
The fourth is the proposed tax on foreign buyers purchasing properties worth over $2m.
The tax won’t apply to Australians, Singaporeans and perhaps citizens of other countries with which New Zealand has tax and trade treaties, but National says it will bring in $3b.
For that to be true, foreigners from countries other than Australia, Singapore and so forth would need to buy around $20b of houses over the next four years.
That’s more than 6000 houses with an average value of $3m. That assumption seems heroic, even if encouraging people to sell houses to foreigners to fund tax cuts is a good idea.
…Hoot’s ain’t no card carrying member of the Communist Party! His analysis highlights the naked venal self interest National are prepared to use to m utility public policy to deny political gravity and generate ‘trickle up’ instead of ‘trickle down’ economics where the poor have to subsidise the rich!!!
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