Finally someone in Labour knows how to throw a punch over CGT hysteria

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The lack of any communications strategy by Labour to the Capital Gains Tax is honestly jaw dropping.

They have looked as flat footed on this issue as they did on Election night when they thought they had lost.

They didn’t seem to know the report was coming out.

They didn’t seem to have any response to the report.

They didn’t seem to have any communications strategy to argue for the change.

This total disarray has allowed National to seed hysteria and fear mongering left right and centre on what night be taxed and at what rate.

Jacinda is getting beaten senseless by Simon Bridges in Parliament this week because she has no answers.

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Labour should have known the report was coming out, they should have had a response lined up and they should have had a communications strategy sorted.

This is a total failure of imagination and basic political foresight.

It looks like all they have is paying Cullen a $1000 a day to say calming things to Breakfast TV hosts and the on air staff of ZB.

So thank Christ for Willie Jackson who actually has the spine to throw a bloody punch, this from his Facebook page

There has been a lot of hysteria about the Capital Gains Tax from pundits, the media and of course National. The same hysteria that was whipped up about our desire to strengthen worker rights, the same hysteria that claimed the Government would fall if Winston became acting Leader and the same hysteria that suggested Jacinda couldn’t be a mother and the Prime Minister.

It’s a malicious fear, not based on genuine concerns, but on bias and falsehood.

Why do we need this Capital Gains Tax? To be a fairer and more equal New Zealand, that’s why.

Earlier in life I was a Freezing workers president. It’s hard physical work in the freezing works, and while I have gone on to hold many jobs and roles in my life, the injustice that a worker paid tax on every dollar they earned while some business people and property speculators did not, angered me then as it does now.

This CGT is an attempt to share the tax burden across the entire spectrum of the economy so that some relief can be provided for working people.

Why should the men and women of the freezing works, of the manufacturing jobs, retail, clerical, the nurses, Drs, Teachers, Police, labourers, everyone who pays PAYE, why should they shoulder the full weight of taxation while owners and speculators don’t pay a cent?

This is about inequality and how to counter that inequality. Why should working people pay tax, but those who can afford accountants avoid it?

My time as an Alliance MP was all about attempting to reshape the taxation landscape so that working people weren’t the ones propping up the system while others exploited the loopholes. Now as a Labour MP, I support a CGT that is about closing those loopholes and providing fairness and balance across our tax system.

A CGT is only paid when you realise the value once you sell the house (excluding the family home) or business. This CGT in practice will impact few people and take nothing from anyone because it will only be paid once the property or business is sold.

New Zealand is an egalitarian country, demanding workers’ pay every cent in tax while others mange to exploit taxation loopholes is not the Kiwi way, despite what Simon Bridges says.

We have a report that we will look into and consider in good faith and communicate our vision to the voters who will have the opportunity to vote on it at the next election.

Allowing National and their mates in the media to ignore the inequality of our taxation system has been going on for far too many years and now is the time to be courageous and for a Government to finally address this question.

I think of those fellow workers who stood alongside me in the freezing works decades ago and hope that their sweat and tears won’t go to waste by ensuring everyone pays their fair share, not just them.

…YES! YES! YES!

This is what Labour need to do, actually argue their values and stand up for them rather than looking like frightened children.

There are no excuses for the Government to lose control of the narrative over an event they arranged and knew the date of being launched. There are two lessons from this CGT debacle

1 – The Government needs a far better coms strategy than this.

2 – Stand up for your values and bloody well articulate them! 

 

32 COMMENTS

  1. Yes. Its really quite simple and I can just imagine what would happen if every worker got hysterical about their taxes. Not only is it only paid on realising the asset it is only paid on.the part that is profit. Very simple and very fair.

  2. As I believe I have mentioned before, this dithering is rooted in two core problems for Labour:

    1. The current government consists solely of lightweights. It’s all very well to have a charming and pretty PM but behind her there needs to be a heavy-hitting financial person. Someone with experience and competence in what is a very complex business.

    2. Labour sat in opposition for nine long years and failed to develop a plan. I suspect the reason is that the party was/is so factionalised that sensible conversations on policy were difficult to manage.

    • God your a hypocrite andrew you must be blind and deaf to boot having not seen people living in cars begging etc the brighter future your rotten lying national lot promised

    • For once Andrew i agree with you.
      Those in Labour who gutlessly stabbed Cunliffe in the back for the sake of their own careers have proven themselves to be as spineless and vision less and talent less as we all knew they were. Andrew Little is the only one to show ANY grit even tho he led the coupd’etat. I really really want this government to succeed. But lets face it Willie worked so hard to secure the Maori vote for these beltway carpetbaggers if I was him I’d be spewing!!

    • So what? All the countries you allude to run capitalist systems, ergo, doing any business in them means operating by their rules.

      You may as well write that a pianist uses violin technique when he/she chooses to play a violin or any similar analogy.

    • Actually they are more capitalist than NZ.
      However, like the Soviets, Nazis, Khmer, Vietnamese and Cubans they use communism as a surrogate for fascism to help maintain power and line their pockets.

  3. Good chance to help more overseas companies prosper here as apparently the proposed CGT is one of the highest in the world.

    So I guess the smart thing is to if you are a business owner is to domicile your taxes offshore where most of the multinationals already are so you can ‘compete’ on an equal footing.

    Wonderful (sarcasm) another way to put extra taxes on local companies and local taxpayers while ignoring those that are in the cash economy or not even paying 28% corporate taxes here with many accounting loopholes to pile up debt on assets here and transfer the profits tax free…

    From what I can work out a business owner who might have worked their whole life to create a business and employed people and paid local and personal taxes, then gets another 33% tax added at the end of their business sale, while if you did not live in NZ and have arranged your affairs not to have tax liability here then you pay nothing…

    If you business might be worth a lot, obviously pays to get out of NZ!

    All a CGT is going to do is make it even easier for foreign investors to buy up NZ assets here including property and businesses because the incentives to everyone here is if you work hard then the government will find a way to tax you further, while the redistribution is pathetic as a concept, aka most people in NZ are already heavily subsidised with accomodation, WFF, super and so forth with government welfare. Instead of trying to get people onto higher wages the efforts seem to be to help pay people less, and the government tops up the wages with subsidies and tax cuts, which for many are not a tax cut but a tax increase for middle class…

    Instead making business pay higher wages and have much stronger protection including redundancy payments (which I believe are also taxed at full income tax rates) the government is again targeting policy against local businesses and workers.

    Why are all the new taxes under Labour targeted at local residents while ignoring the growing wealth divide of people who enjoy two passports (or more and multiple identities) and are given a free tax ride. Also no interest in rich people settling here with little to zero income and therefore pay no taxes while needing transport and accommodation infrastructure being built for them as well as the older folks being able to retire here after 10 years with super?

    Lets have a look at this scenario, apparently in Auckland 800 new cars are being registered per week from population growth… so a petrol/more parking taxes unfairly effects those who have always lived there while the new 800 cars presumably with new arrivals driving them and driving the need for more infrastructure are not paying for it such as for foreign students studying here who rent and use public transport? There needs to be a tax for infrastructure on every new visa into NZ and a tax on every business who ‘hires’ a new worker into NZ and therefore is creating the demand for new infrastructure and more maintenance, everywhere but the costs being born disproportiately by ratepayers and tax payers here.

    Nope instead the burden is falling on rate payers and workers who have little choices and forced into extra taxes for infrastructure because of government immigration policy leading to 800 new cars in that area on the road weekly. At the same time their quality of life is decreasing as more and more pollution, congestion and overcrowding of hospitals and schools is happening.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12210176

    And as for Wilsons benefiting this can shed light on how corporates operate… Wilsons is owned by Hong Kong based equity firm..

    https://www.smh.com.au/business/wilson-parkings-tax-numbers-appear-to-defy-economic-reality-20160408-go1w4u.html

    Oh and don’t worry about the Australian banksmaking $580,000 in New Zealand every hour…

    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2019/03/the-astounding-profit-australian-banks-make-in-new-zealand-every-hour.html

    Don’t tax them, (or investigate) it’s the consumers fault for not moving to a NZ bank, apparently!

    Yes Labour, go after the business owners and existing tax payers here. Don’t worry about taxes for anyone else!

    • you’re right of course SaneNZ – the rich will do what they always have, move money around to reduce tax, those small and medium business owners who have taken the risk, (and would have lost their shirt/house if they failed), to build up a business – a very stressful process which may shorten ones life-span) and then pay tax on the end result, what was their retirement plan. Fair enough, but probably what will also happen is that they will want more for their business to offset the tax, so the cost of buying a business goes up, tax again pushes inflation in that horrible merry go round. I prefer the NZ Social Credit Party policies thb.

      • Thanks TRACYJANE, I not against taxes, but just favour those that are fair and get everyone equally. So if you are trying to redistribute then you take more from those who have more, and make sure that dishonest people have to pay too, not just always take from the honest taxpaying people as your go-to-guys-girls to get your taxes from!

        Aka if they are to bring in a tax then I favour a stamp duty so that when the assets are transferred the tax is paid at that point and based on the amount built up and you can’t cry poor or pay not tax if so example you can afford a 10 million house or Mc Mansion – you pay a very small amount of tax on that amount.

        Saying that it is death to the left government to bring in more taxes and make their leadership always about taxes!

        We learn’t from John Key and the power assets sales, don’t vote for something you know is wrong and the policitans tell you is a good idea, because as we learn from the power sales we were always better off keeping the power companies and their dividends have already outstripped their sale price….

        They will find that with Kiwibuild and the land they are ‘swapping’…

        They will find that CGT will stamp even more on honest people while enabling those that pay little or no taxes here to flourish further.

        Perhaps if the working tax group’s brief was more in line with making those that pay no taxes or less taxes in NZ legally and the cash economy pay their share they might have had something to cheer about! Instead another wasted opportunity.

    • Of course the fairest tax of all would be a land tax. This is because land is a “common”, (it belongs ultimately to all of us), and therefore anyone claiming private ownership of land should be paying for the privilege; and anyone purchasing land should be doing so on the understanding that the land they purchase will be subject to a tax. So why did Labour take land taxes “off the table”, when forming the tax working group, if they were, as they claimed to be, interested in fairness in the tax system.

      The problem Labour has in selling this capital gains tax is that their main argument seems to be that “all income should be taxed alike”. However this argument is problematic because capital gain is not income but capital. Capital is what an investor employs to earn income, so taxing it is equivalent to pinching a workman’s tools; it reduces the investor’s capacity to earn income in the future; and incidently his capacity to pay income tax. So perhaps what the government gains on the swings it will lose on the roundabouts, if it goes ahead with a capital gains tax.

      • Mikesh there already is a land tax called rates, which increasingly on our low wages people can’t afford to pay. So further land taxes might make more kiwis tenants in their own country.

        Under neoliberalism you can get people from anywhere the market forces don’t apply. Aka you can bankrupt and destroy your own nationals or force them overseas, and then just get more in from over populated countries… aka the rich from other countries that have made money there, will increasingly be the only ones to afford land in NZ on overseas wages, on overseas lower interest rates while at the same time neoliberalism drives the process of local impoverishment from the lowering of peoples wages..

        A decade ago people could afford housing and rents, now they can’t. The only thing has changed is neoliberalism and increased globalism because interest rates are actually lower so affordability should be stronger, but because peoples wages and jobs are insecure while we have escalating costs of the basics then people are getting poorer.

        Even if someone got a house, how could they afford further land taxes onto of all the other items they pay like a mortgage, rates, insurance?

        I’d be more keen on land taxes on companies and trusts and individuals that are non resident for tax purposes.

        • Rates are not a land tax, if only because they are not paid to central government. Also, however, rates levels are not determined by the underlying value of the land being rated but by the amount of local authority expense to be distributed. This means that rates could be the same in two different localities even where land values are very different.

        • The tax working group was required to maintain tax neutrality in their recommendations, so a land tax would be made affordable by households by introducing offsetting reductions in income tax.

          • So retired, disabled people who have no income, survive how, a pension to pay increased rates, insurance, and new taxes???

            Or does the state have to build more retirement villages for them?

            Older renters are already a huge problem facing the country because greedy governments and councils sold off the pensioner flats in the 1990’s and people can’t save with all the rip offs stripping them of wealth like the global financial crisis every decade.

            The income tax breaks are laughable in themselves when put in line with the cost of living and new taxes coming in, like petrol taxes and increased rates.

          • Again, that is the mistake, the government screws up by tinkering forever on the criteria on the tax working group to make it tax neutral when they should have left everything on the table. Weird too when the government cry poor at every opportunity with health care, transport and education.

            Missed opportunity not to actually have blue sky thinking so they can look at taxes for the 21 century and raise more taxes but it should be targeted at people who are already not paying their share. They let so many new people in, that don’t pay taxes here and now scrabbling around trying to make a scapegoat for that and the increased poverty by blaming their number one guy, landlords who are getting out of that industry.

            Also by have such a homogenous group with the tax working group there was little representation from ordinary people, landlords, renters small and local business contributing to it. It is geared up already against financial taxes even though banking is the biggest taker of profits offshore in NZ.

            But because most people are in that sector on the tax working group and of course the government have it in their heads that everyone hates landlords so they are an easy target for political purposes, they have pushed it in that direction.

            Increasingly renters are getting smarter themselves and noticing the rental shortages are a big issue for them and tired of being forced into $1200 a week hotels from the business sector when they are on WINZ, so more taxes and healthy homes won’t stop that – it will do the opposite because the underlying issues were never addressed and the tinkering is in the wrong direction because when you look at Chinese most wanted gambling $300 million at Sky city and so forth and being charged for money laundering.

            If you are outside of the tax system, you don’t pay a bean!

            If they wanted less investment in property, why allow Singapore investors to buy here and what is the point of 150,000 open work permits each year and foreign students being able to buy a house here without citizenship and the OIA is the highest it has ever been in it’s acceptance?

  4. Just take out the local businesses and workers who are already being made redundant because of all the frauds of not paying for labour, using stolen or untaxed goods that are now just part of business in NZ… the only taxes I agree with are direct taxes that target the cash economy… soon there will be no honest people left running businesses in NZ, they will have been out competed by the cash and fraudulent economy here.. meat, honey, labour, cigarettes, drugs, you name it, there are now ‘parallel’ businesses here that don’t pay taxes… which drives out those businesses who do!

    Offender’s tax bill ballooning to $1.3m
    https://courtnews.co.nz/2019/01/30/tax-bill-ballooning-to-1-3m/

    Exclusive: Filipino shipping agent escaped jail time after 225k un-taxed cigarettes found in container she arranged

    https://www.tvnz.co.nz/content/tvnz/onenews/story/2019/03/07/hold-filipino-shipping-agent-escapes-jail-time-after-225k-un-tax.html

    Rich building boss guilty of immigration fraud after residency granted, loses court battle with Herald

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12171615

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11842563

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12077932

    They don’t even go to prison in most cases the fines are less than the offences, meaning crime pays here in NZ!

    Great to see that our immigration laws takes the ‘good character’ seriously into account when they give away the residency visa’s like lollies within short periods of time to defraud the Kiwis… even the foreign teachers have been caught smuggling Meth into NZ, it’s become like some sort of part time (or full time) job for many new to the country here.

    Teacher convicted of drug smuggling allowed to return to work
    https://www.hcamag.com/nz/news/general/teacher-convicted-of-drug-smuggling-allowed-to-return-to-work/142209

  5. I hope Willy keeps reminding his colleges of his view when Winston and Shane Jones take the knife to this T.W.G report.
    It is not just the CGT but a whole lot of other changes that the public needs to be aware of.
    The implementation of this report is far from certain while NZF has any influence.
    The coalition is not singing from the same song sheet here and this report may go the way of the recent timid change to our labour laws , all fizz and no beer.
    If the government are serious about fairness then they will have to show some authority where broadcasting is concerned.
    Our media landscape is hardly a model of open non biased reporting and they must address this if the public is to be informed without the usual vicious diatribe skewing the debate.

  6. How much do retired NZ MPs get as a pension in addition to their national super?…in many case they own multiple houses and assets… they have been on big salaries and they get privileged jobs in power after they leave parliament

    …in many cases it is a rogues galley of Sirs and Dames who are getting this special elite super pension( eg Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble, Ruth Richardson, Jenny Shipley, Michael Cullen, John Key, Bill English)

    ….this MPs elite pension needs to be dropped and MPs should get the same super as all other New Zealanders( or there needs to be a severe capital gains tax on their special elite super)

    …this would save a lot of hard working honest NZ taxpayers money

    …it might also bring elitist cronyist MPs down to earth a bit if they know they have to struggle like the rest of us after they leave parliament

    …imo they should also not be holding official state jobs down which affect the well-being of New Zealand and New Zealanders after they retire…some are working for other countries and NOT New Zealandor New Zealander’s interests

  7. A warning for the NZ Labour Party and Michael Cullen about squeezing the NZ middle class further with increased taxes…

    ( Dont forget the NZ Labour Party gave us Roger Douglas, who created a whole generation of NZ unemployed underclass and created generations of NZ families living on unemployment benefits…Dont forget this NZ Labour Party refused to work co-operatively with the Mana/Internet Party and effectively sunk it ….giving the John Key government more years in Parliament…this is not a genuinely Left Party)

    ‘How Much Longer Will The Middle-Class Politely Tolerate Its Own Destruction?’

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-09/how-much-longer-will-middle-class-politely-tolerate-its-own-destruction

    • +1 RED BUZZARD

      Also the sly old fox, did not implement a capital gains tax when he had the opportunity as finance minister. Wonder why? Nice to see he can get $1000 per day promoting the idea though for Labour, (sarcasm) that weirdly he was not keen on when he had the chance!

  8. Willie Jackson worked in the freezing works? But why? We all know that urban Auckland built AO/NZ’s historic, and contemporary wealth and infrastructure to become the largest and richest city in AO/NZ. No one can tell me how it is, that Auckland does that. It does the most-domestic-spending-and-consuming yet exports-the-least-for-our-foreign-exchange yet it’s marketed as doing precisely the opposite. How does it do that? Sorcery perhaps?
    Even back in the day, when Dunedin actually, literally was the largest and richest city in AO/NZ, Auckland was the largest and richest city in AO/NZ in the hearts and minds of grifters, swindlers, liars, cheats and sociopathic narcissists.
    Today? Auckland is Big and Flash and Sporty Spice and Pert and Buffed and Everything and jacinda dares not go near that terrible logical fallacy and neither will anyone else for fear of being probed by the GCSB at the behest of our billionaire money cultist sect. That’s why The Lunacy that is us, our stuff and things will become ever more lunatic until someone comes along and wipes us off our country and takes over thanks to us being too stupid to figure it out.
    willie jackson says nothing new nor important here. Don’t be fooled.
    Unless, of course, he takes a walk on the Lost Side and sidles up to any sheep farmer in an attempt to bring them over and into the Fold and away from the True Blue Fascist Natzo’s. Remember the farmer willie? They grew the flesh you and your work mates used to cut up for export?
    How about shearers? ( Shearers shave sheep. If you wear woollen clothing it’s the shearer who removes it from the animal as carefully as a shearer can from a wild animal who will try and rip your nipples off, will shit everywhere, is heavy and there are thousands more coming. )
    Labour ( What ever the fuck that is?) National and the sundry other little fleas that hang on for a little of the blood the bigger suckers spill their way are now an irrelevance. Our political system is a facade. A set dressing to maintain an illusion. We have no governance, we’re told what to do, how to do it, when to do it and we’d better comply of we’ll get fucked without the kissing. While you think you’re flash on your $130,000 PA as you drive the X6 to your flouncy little O-fice there are billionaires flying into ZQT almost daily to swindle AO/NZ out from under your noses.

    We need a Rutger Bergman.

    [He] says Carlson is “a millionaire funded by billionaires” and “not part of the solution” but “part of the problem, actually”.
    Carlson, near-speechless for much of the interview, replies by saying: “Why don’t you go fuck yourself, you tiny brain. You’re a moron. I tried to give you a hearing but you were too fucking annoying.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/20/historian-who-confronted-davos-billionaires-leaks-tucker-carlson-rant

  9. Bravo, young furry bearded fellow. This the best they have won in ’17 — a pulpit. But have you seen their personnel, generally? And not a fucken fighting talker among’m. CVs pretending to be humans.

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