Ax this tax

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Wayne

Without realising it, this guy/campaign is arguing for a CGT on all propery.
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April 15, 2019 3:57pm
- Tall Man
  
  Or, and I know I’m being radical here….CGT on no houses……
  
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  April 15, 2019 5:36pm
  - Wayne
    
    Okay… And do we tax other capital gains? And if not why not?
    
    I am genuinely curious to hear reasoned arguments against CGT.
    
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    April 15, 2019 6:58pm
Ian Boag

He makes it sound like his personal home. Specifically excluded from proposed CGT.

??
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April 15, 2019 3:58pm
- coge
  
  Only “some” personal homes are exempt.
  
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  April 15, 2019 4:15pm
- Farmer boy
  
  You are wrong. If you run a business from home or have flatmates or run an AirBNB you would be liable for a CGT charge when you sell. Let’s see if Winston opposes it this week.
  
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  April 15, 2019 4:42pm
  - Ian Boag
    
    Personally I think that if the home is to be exempted, those things (although logically sound) fall into the “too hard” and “not worth collecting” and “dumb” baskets. Like PAYE for paperboys. There would be a diddly amount of revenue collected.
    
    You own a place for 10 years and it is your home. In that time you rent bits of it it out for 30 weeks on Airbnb. 30 weeks is about 3% of the time and you are maybe renting 25% of the house. So if you are honest about it when you come to sell, 25% of 3% of the gain would be taxable. About 0.75% of the gain. So you would pay tax of something like 0.25% of the gain. Wow. Crippling. Kick in the guts.
    
    Home office might be a bit more – maybe 10% of the house, so 10% of the gain would be taxable. That would be 3% of the gain paid to the taxman.
    
    Dunno how one would do the sums for flatmates. I imagine IRD would not have too many clues either.
    
    These figures would apply if the rate is 33%.
    
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    April 15, 2019 5:00pm
    - Captain Mainwaring
      
      Ian, are you Cullen’s bag man?
      
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      April 15, 2019 5:16pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        Not really. Just doing the sums. If you owned a house for 10 years and did a bit of Airbnb and had to pay $1500 CGT out of a $200k gain would it keep you awake at night?
        
        Like I said – and Cullen didn’t – I think if you exempt the family home you should exempt all this other rats and mice stuff.
        
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        April 15, 2019 6:54pm
      - Tall Man
        
        I’m glad you have nothing to do with my money, you can’t even work it out with your fingers.
        
        Why would someone do 3 weeks a year. That would almost be a waste of time.
        
        You minimise the numbers to ridiculous levels. How about using some real numbers…. a young guy doing up a house to get onto the housing ladder with two flatmates. Use those numbers..actually don’t, you are fixated on supporting this travesty because you have no skin in the game so your opinions aren’t that valid.
        
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        April 15, 2019 8:13pm
    - hullkiwi
      
      Ian, you display the usual arrogance and ignorance of the left, and live down to our expectations of: if it exists tax it, if it still exits cripple it with more tax – if that fails legislate it out of existence.
      
      Under the TWG the family home that I own with my wife will be subject to CGT. Yet it is not multi million dollar mansion in Auckland, nor is it the home of fat cat, rich pricks playing the property game. 20% of the property is under council covenant, which I cannot develop or sell, but is prone to exotic flora and fauna, which we have to control at our expense.
      
      So, my question to you, when we come to sell our property, do you think Robbo will look favourably on the all the annual out goings on our lifestyle block, all of which are the norm to maintain lifestyle blocks?
      
      The inclusion of lifestyle properties and farms in the CGT regime, is nothing but an ignorant, jealous, politically envious stunt. Cullen & Robbo need to stop believing in myths, as lifestyle properties do not provide taxable net income and they cost substantial amounts of time and money to sustain (over and above the house).
      
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      April 15, 2019 6:13pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        If one accepts the family home exemption (I do) then there is a boundary between homes and farms. I would have thought the 10-acre thing would make sense. That would be 40k sq m rather than 4.5k. That’s sort of what most lifestyle blocks are.
        
        I think if this farm/lifestyle block thing was set at 10 acres most of the grumbles would go away.
        
        Except from those who totally oppose a CGT ….
        
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        April 15, 2019 6:40pm
    - Warren Murray
      
      What you appear to be saying is that no tax should be due where it is inconsequential. I.e the De minimis rule.
      
      The problem is (as others have noted), is the safe harbour criteria that apply to the family home excludes a lot of properties. The sums involved are high and any tax due will fail any de minimis rule.
      
      The options to deal with this are to have no exemptions (I.e, include the family home), which is political poison;
      relax the criteria for a family home exemption, which creates a huge loophole that will further undermine the policy and significantly reduce any tax revenue.
      
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      April 15, 2019 6:15pm
    - Farmer boy
      
      I think the proposed rule is 50 percent of the house or less. Some people I know use up to 40 percent of smaller houses for business, but certainly 25 percent is quite common. So one needs to factor in the range of scenarios. That aside, like you I tend to think this provision could disappear. Cullen shouldn’t have added it, but that’s Cullen for you. Nobody from the small business sector was represented on the TWG and this Coalition is bereft of understanding how to make a dollar.
      
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      April 15, 2019 6:24pm
    - alloytoo
      
      The compliance required for your proposal is ridiculous.
      
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      April 15, 2019 6:41pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        About the same as the current compliance stuff about how much of the rates, maintenance and insurance you claim for the home business on your income tax return.
        
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        April 15, 2019 7:24pm
- Tall Man
  
  You really don’t understand the proposal do you?
  
  He intimates that he is on a rural property therefore is subject to some CGT.
  
  I know you adore the premise of this tax but al least make an effort to get your facts correct.
  
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  April 15, 2019 5:39pm
- Mr_Blobby
  
  I think he is on a lifestyle block bigger than 4500 square metres.
  
  What he is talking about is inflation.
  
  He buys and then a few years later he sells, there has been no real gain, he is taxed on the inflation gain, then has to pay full inflated price for the next house.
  
  Nothing more than a capital stealth TAX.
  
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  April 15, 2019 5:39pm
- Berend de Boer
  
  Ian, lifestyle properties are not exempt, so if they are your home, you pay tax on it every time you sell.
  
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  April 15, 2019 6:30pm
- alien
  
  Not excluded because it is a lifestyle property
  
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  April 15, 2019 7:13pm
stewmar

It’s not a stealth tax, it’s stealing from the citizenry
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April 15, 2019 4:08pm
- Wayne
  
  Can you explain your thinking?
  
  I am personally against a CGT but my reasoning for this is that I’d rather not pay tax on gains that my investments make. Beyond this self-centred agrument, I can’t think of a single ethical, philosophical, or fiscal reason why a CGT is a bad idea.
  
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  April 15, 2019 4:31pm
  - MickMac
    
    Wayne
    It is another tax.
    We have enough.
    No more taxes….
    
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    April 15, 2019 4:43pm
    - Wayne
      
      Okay cool. Can you show data which supports the view that NZrs pay relatively more tax than other western democracies.
      
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      April 15, 2019 4:50pm
      - Aunty
        
        Irrelevant.
        
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        April 15, 2019 5:04pm
      - UrbanNeocolonialist
        
        More tax makes everyone poorer in the long term as it kills growth. Other western countries (High tax Europe!!) have low or no growth. Do you really think we should be more like them? The fastest growth is in the places with smaller govt:
        http://grandfather-economic-report.com/OECD-govt-chart.gif
        
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        April 15, 2019 5:18pm
      - calendar girl
        
        Where did he say that?
        
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        April 15, 2019 5:19pm
      - Charmaine Hawke
        
        It isn’t that we pay more than any other democracy it is the fact the government of the day only has a limited moral right to my hard work.
        It has been fun explaining to the 13 year old that a 50% tax rate means she will work 2 1/2 days out of 5 for the government, in her words “How the hell is that fair and what right do they have to my hard work?”
        
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        April 15, 2019 5:20pm
      - Tall Man
        
        Irrelevant.
        
        We execute less people than Saudi Arabia.
        
        we have less people speaking french than France.
        
        We don’t have any nuclear submarines so that’s a prob;em.
        
        What others do or don’t do is irrelevant.
        
        We don’t need more tax,, we need smarter expenditure and less waste.
        
        The bulk of “wage” earners in Thailand pay 10% flat tax or 20% and there is VAT @ 7% so maybe we should go that route….
        
        Exactly, irrelevant, much like your comment.
        
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        April 15, 2019 5:45pm
      - All_on_Red
        
        What’s other countries Tax take got to do with it.
        The country could run quite well with what they get given now.
        National did it.
        If anything we could probably pay less.
        
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        April 15, 2019 5:59pm
      - kloyd0306
        
        Repeating what I read somewhere earlier today, tax should be based on what the country needs not wants and All on Red is totally correct – what other countries do is their problem, not ours.
        
        Even if CGT works in some countries is no reason we should have it.
        
        I hope the CoL tries it on so that they will be decimated in the 202o election.
        
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        April 15, 2019 6:20pm
      - Wayne
        
        I don’t see how relative rates of taxation are irrelevant when you argue that we are over taxed or not taxed enough.
        
        NZ has crumbling infrastructure, this needs to be remedied.
        
        And…Western democracies grow slower than undeveloped countries because they are growing from a higher base. Same reason why smaller companies tend to grow faster than huge ones.
        
        Charmaine. I hope you explain to your daughter how roads, police, courts etc are paid for (all quite useful if she ever wants run or work for a business).
        
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        April 15, 2019 7:03pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        Urbo
        
        So we need to be like Greece or Somalia where noone pays tax ….
        
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        April 15, 2019 7:25pm
    - Ian Boag
      
      Red
      
      Nuff taxes … ?
      
      A CGT would broaden the tax base.
      
      Pension presently $30m+/day. Going up by $700m/year and the same pensioners (I’m one) are chewing into health resources at a rate we can sustain no sweat. We can fund this indefinitely of course without doing anything to “control” it.
      
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      April 15, 2019 6:18pm
      - All_on_Red
        
        If you think the current Govt is using our money efficiently you’re a bigger fool than I already take you for.
        A CGT is a waste of time and it won’t gather as much as they are telling you and it will cause huge disruption and cost to us all.
        But I hope you keep on with your moronic arguments and Labour does it.
        Then they’ll be gone.
        
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        April 15, 2019 6:42pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        Yo Red
        
        So you figure the pension and health care for oldies are endlessly sustainable ….
        
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        April 15, 2019 6:45pm
      - All_on_Red
        
        ‘So you are saying’ is a tell for someone who is so dense they don’t have an argument
        If you could understand what I wrote you will see that I think they can do a better job with the money they have.
        You mention $700 million for pensions.
        Well, they’ve just wasted that amount of money on working groups alone.
        So here’s an idea. You go through the Budget and look at expenditure and then come back and hand on heart tell us this Govt is the most prudent and wise with our money there has ever been!
        Lol
        
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        April 15, 2019 6:51pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        Red.
        
        The $700 million is the annual increase. Pension cost 15000 million this year … But we can sustain this increase forever. Are you a pensioner?
        
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        April 15, 2019 7:01pm
      - coge
        
        We were told this was revenue neutral. Was Labour lying about that?
        
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        April 15, 2019 7:16pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        coge
        
        Probably. Sort of. A CGT would take a while to ramp up. So the “neutrality” would be over a period of years. In that time there would be changes in the tax system demands (pension/health/education) so noone would ever know ….
        
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        April 15, 2019 7:44pm
      - All_on_Red
        
        Boag
        There are other ways to address the bulging Pension cost.
        Look at Australia and their ManagedSuperannuation/ Self Managed Superannuation Schemes and the way they do it.
        They work well although I see greedy Labor are trying to get their fingers on it.
        Socialising the cost by just taking more Tax is not the right way.
        Same with Healthcare. Taking Private Insurance should be encouraged.
        
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        April 15, 2019 9:31pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        red
        
        The Australians have compulsory personal super plans. It’s quite a long time since Winston was pushing for something like that here and there was a referendum and the idea was totally defeated.
        
        Go figure
        
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        April 16, 2019 8:42am
    - Tall Man
      
      People, we’re wasting our time here.
      
      These guys with no potential exposure to a CGT are more than happy to see it implemented regardless of whether it is needed or smart.
      
      As mentioned, National were on track with expenditure and were looking to increase the tax take by stimulating real growth. The coalition have no real idea how to do that so think they’ll just ramp up the tax take and deliver more “baubles” to their devoted fans, some of which waste our time posting here.
      
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      April 15, 2019 8:06pm
  - wreck1080
    
    My concern with the CGT is that it introduces inefficiency into the economy and it will decrease productivity. But a CGT may also divert investment from property and into the productive sector, resulting in positive GDP growth that entirely negates or even surpasses the CGT cost.
    
    I get that many kiwibloggers don’t like the idea of paying any tax at all. For some reason they feel it is not necessary to contribute to public infrastructure and services.
    
    Where I have sympathy, is the fact that the government wastes so much money and we have people in government that are undeserving of taxpayer funding .
    
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    April 15, 2019 5:03pm
    - All_on_Red
      
      Exactly but alas we seem to have some who are so dumb in economics and budgets that they think giving an inefficient manager more money is what’s needed.
      This CGT argument has been going on for several decades. Every time eventually logic prevails.
      Good to see Simon Bridges say he’ll cancel it.
      
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      April 15, 2019 6:57pm
    - Tall Man
      
      I don’t agree, why invest in a risky proposition when you can live in a luxury home, which will increase above inflation, and make a lovely gain when you’re ready to cash up.
      
      Back to the old way…buy a home, fix it up, enjoy the mods for a few years, flog it and keep moving up the ladder.
      
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      April 15, 2019 7:56pm
  - unaha-closp
    
    We have a housing shortage and this tax will make it much less profitable to invest in housing. When the CGT is implemented, there will be a large reduction in housing investment. The next generation will be reliant on Kiwibuild type initiatives and therefore quite homeless.
    
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    April 15, 2019 5:36pm
    - All_on_Red
      
      You’re right.
      The housing crisis we have is currently a lack of supply of quality rentals.
      Here’s a prediction for you.
      When Twyford realises he has no buyers for all the houses he’s has bought through Kiwibuild he will flip round to this point of view
      
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      April 15, 2019 6:59pm
    - Tall Man
      
      Probably the plan, increase dependence on the state.
      
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      April 15, 2019 7:52pm
  - alloytoo
    
    1. It’s a tax on inflation, while it may appear as if a huge profit has arisen in reality the buying power of that inflated price is about the same as the purchase plus improvements.
    
    Philosophically it’s an excuse to steal people’s capital, especially since any given government can manipulate inflation through it’s policies.
    
    2. It’s complicated tax that will have huge compliance costs, not only for the taxpayer, but for the IRD.
    
    Ethically a government has a responsibility to spend tax payers prudently, it’s certainly not ethical to waste tax payers money on unnecessary compliance costs, nor to impose those costs on taxpayers.
    
    Fiscally it’s a poor tax, overly complicated, promotes avoidance and generally suffers from poor yields.
    
    Fairness is an emotive, but ultimately poor argument in favour of the tax.
    
    Taxes aren’t fair. if they were fair everyone would pay the same amount, or at very least the same rate.
    
    Taxes should be efficient, low compliance cost, low avoidance incentive and broad based with a high yield.
    
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    April 15, 2019 7:15pm
    - Ian Boag
      
      “It’s complicated tax that will have huge compliance costs, not only for the taxpayer … ”
      
      Gain = sale price
      – purchase price
      – new capital and/or retained earnings
      
      Not a lot of numbers there.
      
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      April 15, 2019 7:29pm
      - Tall Man
        
        You really do know nothing.
        
        Who ascertains the values if the asset initially? Who pays for that?
        
        Add that cost in then multiply it by a few hundred thousand…then do it again….
        
        “Not a lot of numbers there”…not a lot of sense I think is what you mean.
        
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        April 15, 2019 7:44pm
      - alloytoo
        
        Lets make tax fairer, lets do away with progressive PAYE and make a flat poll tax.
        
        Nice simple numbers….
        
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        April 16, 2019 8:32am
      - Ian Boag
        
        Tall Man
        
        (shorty)
        
        Had the house valued a couple of years ago by a professional valuer. Cost $400.
        
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        April 16, 2019 9:14am
    - Tall Man
      
      Look at the comment from ian below.
      
      Now you know what level of ignorance there is out there.
      
      They just don’t get it, for years compliance and admin will exceed any tax collected and you are correct, the bulk of the tax will be assessed on inflationary gains as the big gains are well locked in now.
      
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      April 15, 2019 7:51pm
    - JibberJabber
      
      You`re wasting your time Alloy, the Labour lemmings here don`t give a shit about reality.
      Other peoples money is a hell of a drug.
      Simpletons brainwashed into supporting the failed policies of envy.
      
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      April 15, 2019 7:57pm
Linda Reid

He said it was big enough (lifestyle block) to attract CGT. Even if only part of the property is taxed it will still affect his ability to buy again a similar property somewhere else.
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April 15, 2019 4:17pm
- Wayne
  
  Yeah…he is making a level playing field argument. So he is actually arguing for CGT on all properties. This is an ill thought out campaign.
  
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  April 15, 2019 4:52pm
  - wreck1080
    
    CGT should be on everything. So long as we can deduct CGT losses from personal income too.
    
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    April 15, 2019 5:05pm
Ian Boag

From waveydavey (not a CGT fan) in another thread …

“BTW, and I don’t really care whether you believe me or not, 7 years ago I had no house, $12k and a car with a $7k debt on it to my name. Through property investment I now have $2m of virtually mortgage-free property as assets.”

$250k tax free per year give or take a bit. On the face of it, little or no “hard earned tax paid money” went into it. He obviously ran an aggressively highly geared strategy and it worked. It might be a bit of a stretch to call it “investment”. Whatever.

Good on him. He took risks and made a pile of cash. It’s just if I was someone like a reasonably successful businessman – or a GP – or a lawyer earning $250k per year it would be taxed. So I envy his tax-exempt status – which appears to be pretty much all capital gain – and wonder why it should be so.
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April 15, 2019 4:39pm
- Farmer boy
  
  And you are supportive of tax credits in the event of declining property values? Property values have fallen at least 10 percent in Auckland to date. Labour has missed the boat on CGT in terms of property.
  
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  April 15, 2019 4:45pm
  - Mr_Blobby
    
    Don’t expect any mention of adjusting for inflation, or a Capital loss TAX credit.
    
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    April 15, 2019 5:43pm
  - Ian Boag
    
    I think that credits for capital losses are fair enough. Ring-fenced against capital gains elsewhere for something like 5 years.
    
    Would not make a lot of difference. When values fall the market goes all sticky. People don’t sell unless they have to. A tax credit will not change that much.
    
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    April 15, 2019 6:13pm
- KevO'Brien
  
  It may not be all free sailing–sometimes IRD visits later. Making money fast frequently involves gains which attract income tax. The recent brightline test increases that hazard.
  
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  April 15, 2019 5:24pm
- Surely Knott
  
  Sure but why should this guy pay on his humble home, when an inner city waterfront property owner doesn’t. It’s unfair. It’s only his home.
  
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  April 15, 2019 7:14pm
lazza

We operate based on assumptions:

Labour, Col, bleedin heart envy-driven perceived “have nots”.

Yay a CGT.

Others … individual, hard working, self sufficient perceived “haves”.

NAHH … Boo sucks.

Simple … tribal politics really.
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April 15, 2019 5:04pm
- Ian Boag
  
  See above waveydavey comments ….
  
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  April 15, 2019 6:43pm
davidp

I’m in Australia at the moment and ran into a Kiwi who lives here, but still has a property in NZ that he has rented out until he returns to NZ. He mentioned the CGT and said that he was planning to sell his property before the tax starts.

Is Ardern’s tax going to make it harder for NZers to return to NZ? That feels like a bad thing.
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April 15, 2019 5:26pm
- Tall Man
  
  As long as she is here why would they want too?
  
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  April 15, 2019 7:33pm
Ian Boag

Nah. Sell up before the CGT meter starts running. Move funds and invest in Oz property.

Oh – they have CGT. How could they do this …. !
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April 15, 2019 7:38pm
- TomH
  
  Nah Bro, not interested in investing – just want our home (which is now bought and paid for) and the ability to move to another of equivalent-value without someone pretending I have gone up in the world and wanting a slice of the my ‘profits’. No profits sought, or found, (in real buying power), in our home-ownership history. Every bit of value in our family home was paid for by my labor, and that was taxed accordingly, when earned.
  Last time I checked Oz excluded the family home (not sure if there were size limits – perhaps you might know?), and I think they had a minimum time period of ownership too – two years?
  
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  April 15, 2019 7:52pm
  - All_on_Red
    
    Exactly
    You can’t swop an apple for another apple if the apple you’re trying to swop has a slice taken out of it. You have to make up the difference.
    It’s astonishing some people are so stupid they don’t get this point.
    That and realising that people who buy and sell houses for INCOME are already taxed.
    
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    April 16, 2019 10:26am
TomH

I’m the fella in the vid. The vid had to be short, so I didn’t say all I would have liked.
Here’s some figures that made me call the proposed CGT a “stealth tax”
When I first started full-time adult work, my annual salary was $4,600. My wife was working too (but first baby put paid to that a year later). We managed the minimum deposit 18 months later, and we bought our first home, for $28,000 (just over 6 times my annual salary). It was a standard 3-bedroom home on a standard suburban block.
When I retired, the same job I started at was now paying $46,000pa, 10-fold increase. Houses in the same area, of the same standard then cost $280,000, 10-fold increase.
But interestingly, on my retirement, many of my young colleagues were unable to raise the deposit required to buy a house. How could that be?
The answer, we were working under a graduated scale income tax scheme. And, as inflation reduced the value of our dollars each year, we needed more dollars to buy the same house. But the tax method just saw the bigger salaries, and charged higher percentage of those salaries. Occasionally over those years governments would reset the tax scales, but there never seemed to be real catchup. Bracket creep, the effect of paying higher relative tax, due purely to inflation, and having no connection to a genuinely higher (after inflation) rate of pay – is STEALTH TAX.
Stealth, because it was NEVER part of the agreement between government and governed. It was a convenient fundraiser for governments, which was NEVER promoted, was in no policy speeches. It was a STEALTH TAX.
OK, nuf history – and I’m sure most of you already understood that much more than I do even now.
During that career, I had to move half a dozen times, selling and buying our standard 3-bedroom home on a suburban block of the same equivalent value each time. With careful budgeting, and multiple rewrites of our mortgage arrangements, we finally made the last payment, and fully owned our last house (in Auckland) after well over 40 years of payments. That house, in Manurewa (south Auckland) was a standard 3-bedroom house on a standard suburban block.
Having retired, we decided to go bush. No more sirens every 30 minutes, and daily police helicopter visits. Properties are big out here, but the MARKET VALUE of our LESS than standard (old and tired) house and our much bigger than standard suburban block – several hectares in fact, was the SAME value as the house we sold. We basically did a swap.
Now our land happens to be trash – at least to most people. It is a long skinny very steep climbing ridgeline, covered in gorse and blackberry. But it’s quiet.
And now, we realize, at our age we don’t want to have to drive over an hour to visit friends and family. So we are going to move again. So, yet again, we will sell our home and buy another, probably smaller but still big enough to “attract the attention of the CGT as it is proposed”. And here is the thing, the new home will comprise a simple standard 3-bedroom house on a property with space to walk and maybe grow a vege patch, AND it will be quiet. It will be of essentially the SAME MARKET VALUE (very different numbers though) as every home we have ever owned since we got started all those years ago.
But now, this tax, if introduced, wants to take a slice out of each of those “house swaps” – and since we were going from equivalent-value to equivalent-value, now it will have be equivalent-value to equivalent-value-minus-CGT. In other words, each further swap would not be a swap, it would leave less VALUE (maybe more dollars, but it is VALUE that buys a house) to buy the next home.
It ISN’T capital gain. It is inflation gain. So, this proposal is for a stealth tax.
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April 15, 2019 7:44pm
- Mr_Blobby
  
  And let me guess you paid for it with after TAX income.
  
  So you have already paid the TAX.
  
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  April 16, 2019 10:09am
Ian Boag

Most of this seems to be about PAYE bracket creep. Can’t argue with that – in the 70’s and 80’s when inflation was 10% plus it was as a real concern. A high school principal just crept in to the 66% marginal tax bracket. That was more than creep …

On the other hand, the real cost of your mortgage payments decreased. And up to 1985 you could capitalise the Family Benefit for a first home. Once you had that first house, jnflation was your friend. I had a house that doubled in three years around this time. I went from owning about 25% of it to owning 80% of it without lifting a finger.

I have no problem with bracket indexing. Bit of a worry to find I agree with Seymour 🙂 At current inflation rates it won’t amount to a hill of beans though.

My basic position is that if income from work is taxed, there is no reason why income from capital gain should be tax exempt.

The “personal home” exemption creates some odd results at the edge including the lifestyle block thing. I think the rats and mice airbnb, home office etc stuff should be canned and the lifestyle block thing set to 10 acres. Keep it as simple as possible.

The compliance cost thing is a straw man.

The inflation thing can be dealt with by discounting the rate. Dare I say – like other countries do. Keep it simple.

With respect Shorty, you have no idea about my potential exposure to a CGT.
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April 16, 2019 9:36am
- TomH
  
  G’day Ian. I think if we had a slow coffee we could be mates. Bro, we agree with the bracket creep thing in income tax. Surely we can agree that the only good CGT is where it is actually an income tax. If my property increases in value because I make it productive – increasing its value (not dollar cost) – then that “increase” should (and I think IS) taxed. (But all we do is walk on it, and the other stuff we used to in our suburban back yard).
  Taxing a place because of its size is a size-tax, not a capital-gains-tax. There is NO size that easily avoids this differentiation. Size taxing is as brutally unfair as a proximity-to-beaches-tax, average-temperature-zone-tax, or colour-of-house-tax. A capital gains tax needs a fair definition of what is “capital” and what constitutes a “gain”.
  
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  April 16, 2019 10:43am
Mr_Blobby

“I have no problem with bracket indexing.”

Yes but the Government does.
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April 16, 2019 10:14am
- Ian Boag
  
  As had the one before them and the one before that and the one before that … and … and
  
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  April 16, 2019 10:18am

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