Labour Party narrows in on capital gains tax as policy announcement looms – Thomas Coughlan
- Labour has committed to announcing a tax policy this year.
- The party has in the past campaigned on a capital gains tax, but each time ran into trouble explaining it.
- Labour’s finance spokeswoman used questions this week to prosecute Finance Minister Nicola Willis over the Reserve Bank scandal.
I think it is fine that Labour go to the election with an incredibly incremental and meaningless CGT so as to not spook the horses.
The reality is that they need both and a lot more!
The task at hand comrades is to lift the tax yoke from the poorest and place it on the richest.
- We need properly funded public health.
- Properly funded public education.
- Properly funded public housing.
- Properly funded infrastructure.
- Properly funded mental health services.
- We need free public transport.
- We need free dental.
- We need to nationalise Early Childhood Education and make it all free.
- We need to nationalise retirement villages and build more public housing for the elderly.
- We need to fund a 3rd state backed Supermarket to break the duopoly.
- We need properly and fully funded addiction programmes.
- We need Marae Civil Defence funding.
- We need a whole new First Responder Mental Health Teams fully funded service.
There is an enormous amount of money required to actually solve the problems we face and that requires a bold new vision for tax.
We need:
- A Capital Gains tax that doesn’t include the family home.
- A Wealth Tax at the top 1%
- A sugar tax to help fund free dental
- A super tax on Vice profits from smoking, alcohol and gambling.
- $100million ring fenced for addiction services from a legal cannabis market.
- 5% Estate Duties
- First $10000 tax free
- Lower GST from 15% to 10%
- Remove GST altogether from basket of essentials (tampons, toilet paper, fresh fruit and vegetables, tooth paste)
- Financial Transaction Tax
- Pollution Tax
- Land Tax
If the Left actually want to rebuild the current public services and fund genuine solutions by growing the society positively, it is going to need more money.
Bring GST down, subsidise cost and make the wealthiest pay.
Arguing over which tepid tax to gingerly embrace is not a solution and will lead to more Labour Party incrementalism.
The other thing the Labour Party strategists are not seeing is that a strong egalitarian tax policy will bring those middle class Labour Party Auckland voters that Labour haemorrhaged to the Greens back.
For a Party that keeps saying it wants to win Labour they don’t seem to understand why they lost
Labour sacrificed Auckland for the rest of the country over the lockdown, and then added insult to injury by not recognising any of that pain with a build back that justified that sacrifice.
Labour lost working class voters because GST off fruit and vegetables and the petrol prices going back up were a slap in the face and they lost the middle classes who looked at their joke economic platform and intellectually gave their vote to the Greens for their wealth tax.
Ultimately it’s going to require the Greens and Māori Party agreeing now to a united front on negotiating with Chippy so Labour can’t bully the Greens into supporting a NZF/Labour alternative.
Labour needs more revenue to pay for the social infrastructure they champion, simply rearranging the bureaucratic structures as Jacinda did isn’t enough.
It’s going to require a Greens/Māori Party coalition to get that real change through and that’s why Labour can go to the election with their tepid CGT because in the negotiations (where the Greens will need the force of nature that is John Tamihere), Greens and te Parti Māori will be able to force Labour into a more progressive position on Tax.
Chippy can make as many ‘Captain’s calls’ as he likes, the truth is that the Greens and te Parti Māori will want more and they are prepared to fight for more.
NZF are so toxic and hateful that Chippy simply couldn’t cut any deal with them that Labour supporters would accept so pretending he can go to Winston too stop a Wealth Tax is nonsense.
The alternative is this anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-Worker, anti-Renter, anti-environment hard right Government cementing into place their distortions.
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Looking positive for the current Coalition partners.
Yes, if Labour are to do anything leftwing, Hipkins will need to be thrown in the trash where he belongs or his hand will have to be forced by actual leftists.
JMHO Hipkins no hope. LINO to raise from the dead needs a leader who’ll impose a CGT with real teeth and a Wealth tax. But! being dead we have no struggle or hope! The peace of death!
Not too worried one way or another ,but we need to claw back the last lot of tax cuts that should never have been handed out .If the economy was as bad as Luxon and Bob the fist and his mrs said it was at the time why give free money to people .We may need to look at increasing the tax take as clearly the government is not earning enough even after gouging us hard out in the first 12 months of their term .Then there is a raft of increases coming timed to kick in after the next election such as the 12 cents per liter on fuel and increased rego and congestion charges .