The fact is that high flyers with income from NZ are using tax havens. That should be illegal, and IRD should be tracing it. Any valid reason why it shouldn't be?
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Are you seriously saying most farms in NZ are "unproductive wealth" ? How could they possibly pay for Theo Spiering's salary, including a huge amount of PAYE, if they're unproductive ? Not to mention all the other numerous taxes and other benefits they pay to society !
I'm saying they are relatively unproductive. A dairy farm might generate $3000 of income (not taxable profit) per hectare per year at best, drystock much less. Employees per hectare? a small part of one employee. Capital tied up, about $40,000 per hectare for dairy.
Even if the land was used instead for horticulture, different story, much more labour intensive. That would require a lot more staffing though. These days, it's not the name of the game.
Good point. This National Govt has left a lot of loose ends.
I was listening to TV1 this morning, they're saying that ambient temperatures in Sydney and Melbourne will reach 50C on some days in the year by the end of the century, even if climate change is clipped to 2C above the old normal. Someone said it would have an effect on roading.
Of course roading has been one of the areas National professes to be good at. Countless numbers of their MPs have been photographed standing in front of new road constructions. This is progress, the roads of "National" significance (get it?), the Brighter Future. The road transport industry, roading contractors and NZTA etc, have been going gangbusters.
But as this article from 2016 shows, there is a problem with our bitumen. It's not coping too well with the new loading, especially on warm days.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/news...nd-hot-weather
I don't have to tell you how much each km of new roading costs, even re-doing the surface. It sounds like the raw bitumen suppliers feel safe enough from the new rules, but the roading contractors have to add enough polymers into the bitumen to ensure it stays tight on the road when under stress, and doesn't start to flow. The additional material obviously costs extra, there might be some trade secrets there, and if they want to win a contract against the opposition, quality of the bitumen brew might be a factor. And this is just on asphalt surfaces, not the more commonly used chipseal off-highway.
So the market is being left to decide just what sort of roading quality we end up with, and it's anybody's guess what will happen to most of it when temperatures inevitably rise. Just take a drive down SH1 sometime, and in between dodging the patches and the potholes in the two-lane areas, think of this as just the start of the mess to come.