There is a lot of grumbling from the Left over Labour’s Targeted Capital Gains Tax with many saying it doesn’t go far enough.
Sure, but you are missing the true genius of what Labour just announced.
I’m not look to Chippy for the Marxist Utopia.
That ain’t him.
He is a decent bloke with true values who sure as Christ wouldn’t have given hundreds of millions to the Big Tobacco, Social Media Giants or Oil and Gas pimps.
The job of Labour is to win back the voters who voted Labour in 2020 and then voted National in 2023.
The soft middle is who the Future Fund appeals to and who this targeted Capital Gains won’t spook and will ultimately appeal to.
The 3 free GP visits per year is also an enormous win for working people who can’t afford to see Drs.
There is no point in Labour announcing a vast wealth tax to cannibalise vote from the Greens, that don’t get us to 51%!
Labour’s targeted Capital Gains allows the Greens and te Pati Māori to push the Overton Window left and it will be up to them to negotiate a better deal post election.
The danger right now is that te Pati Māori’s insane meltdown and the egos of the Kapa-Kingi clan alongside Doc Ferris’s sectarian ‘Māori only’ position risks destroying the Maori Party Leadership and implode the best chance the Left have to force Labour to be more progressive.
Ironically the biggest winners from the suicide bombing that Ferris and the Kapa-Kingi clan are now embarking upon will be Labour in taking back the Māori Electorates! It has been the Maori Party leadership who have guided them to the position of leverage they have, replacing them will see the Party implode in upon itself.
Great day for Labour, terrible self mutilation by te Pati Māori.
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Those people subjected to the capital gains tax can’t complain too loud because they too will also be receiving the universal 3 free doc visits.
Will Labour remove ACT’s $5 prescription fee too?
I’m prejudiced! Right a CGT but also remove interest tax deductibility. LINO is doing the minimum. Not good enough! Sorry NZ is finished by GREED I’ll vote National to kill what once was a fair society.
I concur jay they must again remove the interest tax deductibility. This is a ridiculous tax vote bribe for landlords and does absolutely nothing to otherwise support all of N.Z. That much is known.
People wanted to hear Labour and it’s policies and this is a great start to end the reign of the worst coalition N.Z. has ever seen.
Greens vs ACT on Labour’s capital gains tax announcement | Herald NOW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-d06SpQoG0
Dont forget the super fund and ACC investment funds .Get the new fund from last week into the fold withe the other two and we are on the way to self funding without more tax increases .The infristructure fund should start with a couple of billion to get some imeadate progress .Chippy is on the move to making NZ a better place .Now we need policy to eliminate poverty .
I think Labour need to see the state of the books before they commit to too much spending, although there is some promises they can make and no doubt they will. As for the Kapa Kingi debacle Labour may now have a better chance of getting some of the Māori seats back. The CGT is good for the middle as it is expensive to see a GP. I see now Labour are releasing some policy we have scaremongering from National. Nicola was ridiculous on RNZ this morning she was talking over Carmel, and she was ranting and raving like a lunatic. Nicola needs to look in the mirror.
The mirror would crack and fall off the wall
“…need to see the state of the books before they commit to too much spending”
This policy isn’t really new government spending, Theoretically, it is simply redirecting money from people engaged in a socially useless activity (speculating in property) to the pockets of other people by saving them the cost of seeing a GP. Extra money is therefore left in the pockets of people who don’t pay for GP visits which they might use for something else – like buying better quality/more food, replacing a dead appliance, of having a cafe meal. The policy is therefore potentially stimulatory, but not fiscally expansionary.
There are some assumptions required for this to be true:
1.) that more of the money will be spent into the economy by the people who no longer have to pay for GPs, than it would have been if it was left in the hands of the landlords. I’d guess that this is a safe assumption, because the money is distributed to a much wider and on average poorer demographic
2.) That the tax will bring in enough money to cover the costs of GP visits. This highlights an internal contradiction in the policy: by making landlordism less attractive as an investment because CG is now taxed, the policy may slow or reverse growth in house prices, and therefore reduce the tax intake. That is why I’m a bit dubious about ring-fencing the tax revenue for this purpose – I suspect that they should be two separate and unlinked policies – each individually a good thing. But obviously linking them is good politics, even if it risks future embarrassment.
Yeah it’s expensive to see a GP alright. In one provincial city there is a 3 months waiting list to become an enrolled (subsidised) GP patient. One of the two medical centres in the city is not accepting new enrollments and is charging non-enrolled patients $320 for a consultation.
Free here in Australia with Medicare. New Zealand is so backwards but at least Labour have a policy to assist GP visits.
Before I read this I would have disagreed that this is brilliant politics, and put it down as another Labour Party cop out that firmly placed them as little better than the train wreck we have now for a self proclaimed “government” that is really little more than a conduit for illegally stolen funds to find their way into the hands of the nefarious global elite.
But by the time I had finished reading I was convinced that yes this was a brilliant strategy by Labour, and leave the Greens and Te Pati Maori to shift the overton window left while capturing the centre swing voters.
But then I began the thought process, and realised that even with the proposed CGT, Labour economic policies are still further right than most of the OECD, midway between centre and extreme far right.
This isn’t good enough.
We need Labour to have a truly centre economic plan which values the worker above wealth and promotes productive investment and not speculation in asset classes such as housing. We need Labour to give the working person the means to provide for themselves and their families with pride and without having to rely on government subsidies to survive. Those subsidies are just a band aid on the real problems society faces and are not a long term sustainable solution.
NZ can’t survive as a free market economy with far right economic policy. That has been proven the last 40 years. Labour needs a paradigm change in thinking that removes themselves from neoliberalism and provides hard working kiwis with the opportunity to grow as people and realise our dreams.
Or else we fuck off to Aus.
Labour had two thousand days to implement CGT during their last mandate but they were too busy worrying about their image and their delivery.
Yep
Come on Ethan they had Kiwibuild.
Kiwibuild was a mistake based on the assumption that private sector developers could be persuaded to act against their own financial interests by building ‘affordable’ houses rather than more expensive ones that maximised their profits.
It was neoliberal Labour. Old Labour would have realised that this is delusional and gone straight for building sh*tloads of social housing.
Eventually they realised their mistake and got Kainga Ora building lots of social housing. National of course shut KO after a bogus report (hit job) from Billy English. They shut KO down because as we must always remember – every social house built is a lost opportunity for a private landlord.
Hell, Bg failed to state the good things that occurred in housing under Labour, is Bg biased?
True Ethan. What they needed to do is say they would build more roads and give tax cuts. Take a leaf from Nationals playbook because there are enough thick people gullible enough to believe those things help the economy. Wow hasn’t that backfired biggly!
Yes more rons
i don’t see why they are carving out the ‘family farm’ as being exempt from cgt.
A farm is a business and if you want to tax capital gains on business then include them.
It would be easy enough to carve out the value of the family home on a farm and tax the rest.
From RNZ.
” Hipkins also committed to reinstating the 30 day rule so new workers are automatically covered by collective agreements, and said Labour would have a fully costed commitment on pay equity ahead of Election 2026.
Pushed on how open he was to changing Labour’s tax policy, in light of the Greens advocating to go further, Hipkins said he would not be budging on it.
“Labour will vote in favour of the policy that we are campaigning on and we will not go beyond that,” he said.
Hipkins said he was not “a complete pushover” like Luxon.
“I don’t think the smaller parties should call all of the shots,” he said. “You don’t have to be like Christopher Luxon, roll over and let Winston Peters and David Seymour tickle your tummy.”
Well that’s a clear indication that as in all the other times the Greens have been involved in propping up Labour they won’t get anything meaningful over the line in negotiations. The Greens are definitely not Winston Jones First that’s for sure.
Its Labours way or no way.
Wonder how much of a rise there would be in Labours pollling if they stated that they would not consider governing with TPM and even Greens as well?
A CGT is not so bad, (I left the Greens in 2002 after failing to persuade them of the necessity), but a property tax is probably better, because it provides incentives for densification and punishes land banking.
CGTs on business require some thought – we don’t want to penalize productive investment or capacity building, but speculation needs no help.
I’m slightly skeptical of Labour’s offering, as it seems very much a package, rather than a step on the road to a series of long overdue reforms. If Labour are taking advice from Treasury they need only consider the collapse in popularity of the Starmer government in the UK – this sad neoliberal crap fools no-one anymore, and the sooner we are done with it the better.
Good point on Labour’s intentions re Greens and T P M. I wonder how they respond to that tummy tickle comment. As for Luxon he is with the other two all the way.
Three free doctors visits sound great but I do worry about access. Right now it takes around 2 weeks to see my GP. I fear it will go to three weeks without some other sort of investment in increasing GP numbers. Maybe a bonding scheme in return for student fees with a rotation in rural practices or wherever there is a need, like Northland.