Quote Originally Posted by Snoopy View Post
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I think it is not unusual for capital gains to be taxed at a lower rate than income. When capital gains tax was introduced in Australia it was to be taxed at half the rate that income was taxed at. Why? Because not all of the capital gain was capital gain above the rate of inflation. Taxing capital gain at half the income tax rate was the ATOs way of adjusting the tax take to reflect the capital eroding power of inflation.

AFAIK Australia and NZ are the only two countries that give individual shareholders credit for tax paid by any company they hold shares in as an entity. Tax has already been paid at the corporate rate by US companies at least, before any dividend is paid to shareholders. I wonder if the lower tax rate paid on Canadian dividends is Canada's way of accounting for this?
Actually capital gains in Australia was not treated like in Canada in the past. They use to take the full gain less an inflation factor % figure. Early 2000 my uncle in Australia was asking how Canada treated CGT and it was clearly different. But it seems that Australia has gone to the Cdn way as it was more simple to half the gain for taxable income instead of looking at inflation tables for each year in the past.

With the tax treatment in Canada you have outlined, I can understand why you object to the tax paid under the New Zealand system SBQ! If you pay no tax at all in your Canadian TFSA, even upon redemption, it is hard to imagine any other country being able to compete with that. I guess there must be some restrictions on TFSA though. I presume you can only take money out of it once you hit 65? Is there a limit on the amount of money you can put into a TFSA?
Hard to imagine? The US has ROTH IRA. The UK has the ISA. All in the form of being tax free investing so this is nothing new. The TFSA came later (only started 10 years ago) only restriction is how much funds transferred in each year. On it's initial introduction it was $5,000 per year, then gradually rising to match inflation (indexed to inflation) to now $6,000 for 2020 contributions. There was 1 year that was $10,000 allowed to be moved in but that was a special year. The restrictions on most part in a TFSA don't really affect the typical investor. Such as say if a person had inside information and bought a penny stock and it grown to like 10,000% fold. Well such penny stocks aren't eligible for TFSA as they don't trade on a reputable stock exchange. So TFSA limit certain equities around the world and I believe the NZX is not allowed (who would?) but most trade the TSX and NASDAQ/NYSE with no issues.

NO restriction when you can sell up and withdraw regardless of age AND the gains are locked in. That is say you had $100,000 balance and like $40,000 of gain, well you don't lose that $100K balance in the following year. You withdraw the full $100K this year, then wait next year and can put BACK that $100K + (the annual contribution of that year) and resume investing.

But here's the real reality. How many people do you know who can put aside $6,000 in savings per year out of their wage / salary? This is the real deal because MOST people can't and when Justin Trudeau came in as PM, he criticised that TFSA was only an investment vehicle for the RICH. The only reason we have Kiwi Saver is simple, people don't know how to save so by taking a portion off their weekly / monthly pay essentially forces them to save ; (same deal in Canada's RRSP).

As a matter of interest, the max contribution you can put into an RRSP is 18% of the annual income. Many high income earners do this in Canada despite their employer would only match 8% or less. But there are some companies that do.

Now going back to TFSA, well say if you wanted to open one up now but never invested before. If you were over 18 in 2009, you do not LOSE the past contributions. The total of those years $69,500 which means you could move in THAT amount to start investing, and this 'contribution amount' continues to grow in future years that you do NOT contribute savings to. So what the gov't is saying that you're not restricted because you don't have funds to invest in 1 year or another; they're giving you the break that in future years you may come across some large sum of savings and you can apply that amount to the past years that you didn't use up.

The sad reality is clear. The NZ investor is going to have less of an AFTER-TAX share investment than the Canadian in the many decades to come.