ACT and National lied about how much pork they are giving rich landlords…
Revealed: Landlord tax cuts will cost hundreds of millions more than ACT, National campaigned on
The Government’s interest deductibility changes are going to cost hundreds of millions more than either ACT or National campaigned on, despite them scaling back the policy from what was promised in the coalition agreements.
On Sunday, the Government confirmed landlords will again be able to deduct interest costs on their mortgages against rental income after the previous Labour Government phased it out.
The Opposition has subbed these deductions a “landlord tax cut”.
The commitment agreed to in coalition negotiations was to phase in the policy and backdate it for the current financial year.
That promise was broken and it’ll now be phased in from the next financial year.
“That’s just a reality of where we sit with the fiscal situation here in New Zealand at the moment,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said at the post-Cabinet press conference on Monday.
Translation: too expensive, not that Luxon could say so.
He repeated, “it’s just an acknowledgement of the fiscal situation we inherited” a number of times.
Official costings released to Newshub show the policy will cost $360 million in the first year, then $785 million, jumping to $855 million in year three, then growing to $915 million a year by the 2027/28 fiscal year.
National only budgeted for it to cost $650 million a year by then.
That’s more than a quarter of a billion dollars difference.
This is the same National Party that claimed all its numbers were solid as a rock.
Asked whether he stood by the claim that National’s numbers were rock solid, Luxon said, “yeah at that time, absolutely”.
Asked how he got the numbers so wrong on interest deductibility, Luxon said, “we didn’t”.
The policy will cost a total of $2.915 billion over four years, $800 million more than National calculated.
This is partly due to costing differences and partly because it comes into effect faster, closer to ACT’s campaign promise.
ACT only budgeted $2.7 billion for it.
Speaking on AM, Seymour said the policy “doesn’t cost”.
“The Government doesn’t have money, it takes money off New Zealanders, so when you say it costs what you’re really meaning is that the Government is going to take less money and take less money from residential rental housing.”
The Council of Trade Unions argues the money could be better directed to those struggling.
“It’s $3 billion which is a billion more than National had promised in its overall tax plans,” said CTU spokesperson Craig Renney.
“It reduces the scope for other expenditure, so that could be less expenditure on health, education, on other bits of public investment.”
Luxon said: “If you are thinking about the renters of New Zealand, which is where I hope you might be thinking, you would be uh, they would be very grateful for the fact that we are doing everything we can to increase the supply of rental properties across New Zealand.”
Hoping the landlord tax break trickles down.
…Craig Renney once again doing the intellectual heavy lifting for the entire Left!
I’m honestly waiting for this Government to announce a Nuclear Power Plant, the reintroduction of whaling and bringing back the death penalty.
TDB warned you that this hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government was going to rob us blind for their rich landlord mates.
The Real Estate Pimps have donated millions to this hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government and they have had the pay day of their lives!
Let’s remind ourselves just how vested the Landlord class is..
…there is an unspoken promise between the neoliberal State and the untaxed capital gains private landlord class that the neoliberal State never builds enough State Houses to alleviate housing desperation so that the untaxed capital gains private landlord class can exploit that housing desperation ON TOP OF getting a $1.5Billion annual subsidy in the form of the Accommodation Allowance EVERY SINGLE YEAR!
Meanwhile Simon Brown’s rail cuts will blow out his pothole budget…
This funding cut could derail the Government’s pothole war…
This funding cut could derail the Government’s pothole war
- The Government is proposing funding cuts for railways, potentially providing as little as $20 million per year. Although individual projects could be topped up with Crown grants.
- Councils are warning cuts to railways would push ‘super heavies’ onto regional roads that weren’t built to handle massive trucks.
- Transport Minister Simeon Brown says it’s not fair to use fuel taxes and road user charges to pay for railways.
…every passing day now there is some hateful right wing policy that vandalises the public good and mutilates our egalitarianism.
If you voted National, ACT or NZ First you are responsible for this.
The frontline is everywhere and resistance is the only thing people of conscience must do.
This isn’t democracy, it’s majoritarianism for corporate interests.
The Political Left urgently need to hold an Opposition Summit to counter the first 100 days of this hard-right-racist-climate-
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Martyn – Spot on! Sad that Labour never passed a form of rent control…despite the urgent need
Can you imagine these landlords putting up with rent control, look how powerful they are, they will come out of this government much better off than the rest of us. We’ll be in austerity while they will be laughing all the way to the bank. Can someone please explain why we should be this worried about landlords and why they deserve all the money they get . Look at the fuss about healthy homes shouldn’t we be worried about the tenants. Plus these landlords already get a government subsidy as in rent allowance. If that didn’t exist maybe the rents would be lower who knows
NOT MY GOVERNMENT -Very true…perhaps the New York City model? My gut tells me that Labour never pushed rent control due to the fact many MPs – including Labour – are Landlords.
The ‘market’ is skewed by the government subsidising landlords keeping rents high
Lols….less than a month into office Nicola Willis kicks over a major infrastructure project designed to ensure the robust transportation of goods and people between the two main islands that make up this country….simply because we as a nation can’t afford to spend the $3Billion it was going to cost to complete by 2028….exorbitant spending by the previous Government!
That action cost the tax payer over $400m in funds already spent and has left us with a fleet of old and dangerous ferries, that will be passed their use by date in about 5 years.
Angry Mom had no Plan B to ensure the country’s most economically important transport corridor continued to function into the future, instead she simply tore up the plans and threw them out in a fit of indignant rage because of the high cost.
Yet 3 months later, apparently we as a nation CAN afford to cut tax to a small minority of wealthy individuals to the tune of…you guessed it $3Billion my 2028.
Quaff quaff, well done chaps, time to crack a few South Island Crays …smoke em if you’ve got em…quaff quaff.
It is totally incredible that National have the brass neck to do that and seemingly get away with it.WHY???? HOW??? Surely they should lose the whole of the south islands support…but they won’t because….FARMERS. Because continued environmentally unsustainable irrigation. But guess what! They won’t be able to hide behind landlords when we have another ferry disaster due to a ferry breakdown. This already nearly happened. God forbid.
Even more incredible is Luxon bare faced lying about how renters support the interest back for landlords. Whaaaat???? When cost go up renters pay, when landlords get this kind of completely stupid benefit back, it never trickes down. That is complete bullshit. Renters are not thankful. They are scared as fuck.
It would not have mattered cause national would have had reversed it anyway Nathan.
covid is pa – True…but, the out-cry would be noted across the nation…and perhaps, give the Government reason to pause any removal of rent control.
Well, the outcry needs to get moving cause the damage being done will takes years to fix as we know it happens.
covid is pa – Agreed
Well we all know that the Rock of Gibraltar is infested with monkeys, and it looks like the Act and Nats’ rock is too.
Potholes everywhere was Phil Twitfords and Robertson’s fault.
Or maybe it was Steven Joyce raising the the weight limit of trucks against all Roading Engineers advise that our roads were not built for those weights and then to top it off John Keys Govt froze the budget roading repairs for 8 years causing a massive catch up for the Labour Govt who actually repaired more roads 6yrs Than National did in nine.