If National wins ...

[Sgt Pepper]

You should consider how much your thoughts are driven by every utterance of any National MP, how you're consumed by the public relations mob they use that doesn't meet your approval, and now how 'the wealthy' and self employed dodge taxes. You're obsessed with these points. That's paranoia. Something you could do is go and buy a business or start one - that might convince you of how wrong you just might be on that last point. ( I know you claim to own your own business, but your lack of knowledge on how the financial world works makes me disbelieve that.)

FP

Hey thats a bit harsh, even for you. If EZ indicates he owns a business, he owns a business.My father owned a small business, owned rental properties, and always voted Labour. Just because someone doesn"t get your or anyones political stamp of approval , too bad.

[nextbigthing]

The Aucklander up for tax evasion of $2m and the Dunedin lawyer up for a $2.8m ponzi type fraud would definitely not be Labour supporters. Would they?

westerly

Nope. They'd be Mana supporters so they could go to a Kapa Haka group instead of prison

[fungus pudding]

FP

Hey thats a bit harsh, even for you. If EZ indicates he owns a business, he owns a business.My father owned a small business, owned rental properties, and always voted Labour. Just because someone doesn"t get your or anyones political stamp of approval , too bad.

Not the point. I certainly don't expect everyone to agree with me.

[elZorro]

You should consider how much your thoughts are driven by every utterance of any National MP, how you're consumed by the public relations mob they use that doesn't meet your approval, and now how 'the wealthy' and self employed dodge taxes. You're obsessed with these points. That's paranoia. Something you could do is go and buy a business or start one - that might convince you of how wrong you just might be on that last point. ( I know you claim to own your own business, but your lack of knowledge on how the financial world works makes me disbelieve that.)

I have on occasion earnt more than the PM's base salary in a year, and I have time to do these posts. Do you think I am an employee, FP?

I'm not sure you know much about the average business, you don't employ anybody.

[nextbigthing]

Wow. Hone really is a scumbag.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/poli...okerau-recount

[elZorro]

Wow. Hone really is a scumbag.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/poli...okerau-recount

700 votes shy isn't a lot, he doesn't have to concede. Maybe he has two reasons for waiting.

It looks like the National govt wants to sell off about 1,000 state houses, maybe more.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/politi...te-house-sales

In their opinion (Bill's), local councils and govt make poor housing providers. I guess that means they are under an obligation to charge under-market rents in many cases, which limits any profits. Terrible. In Hamilton City, the right-wing council is going to sell off all their pensioner flats, which have been held for decades. They will use the money to partly pay off recent debts. If there are not enough social housing providers with the means to buy all these units, you can assume the land will be used for something else. Govt has helped set the direction for local policy, they've told councils to stick to core business. Roads, parks, water, dog control.

While the V8 races might have been a step too far - and they were diddled at every step on the way in and way out - a council has an opportunity to guide or empower the city with events like that.

In the regions and in the cities, we're heading for a bleak user-pays future.

[nextbigthing]

In the regions and in the cities, we're heading for a bleak user-pays future.

At least the musicians will be paid what they deserve el Z

[nextbigthing]

NBT, surely you can see that these types of transactions are at the cheap end of the scale. When someone who has a few million dollars of borrowing - because they have an income sufficient to pay the interest, and had say a 20% deposit with some other security - and makes an inflation-topping several million dollars of untaxed capital gain in just a few years, with minor risk to the downside, now that's creaming the other taxpayers. It would take quite a few cashies (which are noticeable by dockets which exclude the use of the word GST or tax invoice usually) to make up for that.

Yes el Z I do see your point. However it's a number game too. So you're saying it's ok for tradies to do cashies because it's only small figures they're dealing with. But multiply that by how many times they're doing it a week and multiply this by the vast number of tradies etc out there doing it and hey presto, the figure is probably not too far off what the far fewer investors make (less people but larger sums). So why is it then ok for the tradies to do it but not the investors? The principle remains the same by your logic, the taxpayer is being 'cheated'. It's not ok.

[elZorro]

Yes el Z I do see your point. However it's a number game too. So you're saying it's ok for tradies to do cashies because it's only small figures they're dealing with. But multiply that by how many times they're doing it a week and multiply this by the vast number of tradies etc out there doing it and hey presto, the figure is probably not too far off what the far fewer investors make (less people but larger sums). So why is it then ok for the tradies to do it but not the investors? The principle remains the same by your logic, the taxpayer is being 'cheated'. It's not ok.

NBT, I can agree in part. I'm still making up my mind. First, I don't provide cashies in my line of work, and it's usually tradespeople who assume you'd like an under-the-counter deal, when you just want to get the job done. I suspect that sometimes these cashies are offered to mask a higher-priced job with poor work quality, and that does happen sometimes.

As I say often, good business people don't need much of a hand from government once they are established. It's getting past the first few years that are important. When you're working a 40 hour week as an employee, and all of your income is taxed at the full correct rate before you even get it, it's hard to put up with the tax bypassing that goes on, and I still don't like to see it either.

Even if their business is marginal, the rest of us pay taxes as due, and they probably just need to be a bit more organised with their pricing and overall presentation. There are some people who should never be in business at all. Most eventually get weeded out.

But, I would think that if you added all this fairly small-scale stuff together, it wouldn't add to much per business, as a percentage.

But let's look at all the rental and commercial property landlords, farmland owners etc. The total capital invested must be huge. The annual returns must be fairly low, not much above 10% at best. Farm returns are about 4% - 5% on capital, or worse. Because of the tax-free capital gains, more and more borrowings are used in these sectors in NZ, at the expense of more productive and job-providing enterprises. That is what I'm grumpy about. How are we going to move forward while the economy's settings favour those who are relatively unimaginative large-scale users of capital investment?

[elZorro]

I'm just starting to compile some data on the levels of property investment. The residential sector seems to be the easiest to find. This graph is a bit old, but shows the bank mortgage loan books in about 2010.

http://www.interest.co.nz/news/58613...ds-most-volume

Further down it looks like there are about 1.74mill houses in NZ, 65% of them mortgage free, all worth say $650billion now, with say $200billion of mortgages on them. If 600,000 of these in total are rentals, the landlords could owe an average of about $110,000 on them, or $68billion of loans. It's not a great deal I guess, when that is the amount the govt collects from us every year.

However, as an example, it looks like the biggest bank, ANZ, loans out nearly twice as much to non-residential borrowers, as it does to residential landlords. This would be commercial building owners, and farmers, plus businesses who are lucky enough to not use their own homes as capital. This could be as much as about $140billion nationwide, across all banks. Farmers collectively owed about $50Bill in 2013.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times...ers-debt-alert

If all of the borrowing of say $150bill on commercial assets (assume fully mortgaged) averaged a clear return of 20% p.a, and tax was paid on that at 33%, it would return taxes to the govt of $10bill p.a, and $20bill p.a. back to the investors in clear profit. The figures would improve if most of the assets are paid off, which they will be. A 20% capital return is unlikely for property assets, but can be a modest assumption when applying it to good business assets. And those businesses generally employ more staff.

The National Govt has opened a tax loophole for foreign investors in NZ. They can buy bonds in NZ companies, but don't pay any tax on the income. The money can come in from tax havens in the Cayman Islands, for example, so returns won't be taxed anywhere.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opin...n-our-tax-base