Labour govt 2020-23

[Balance]

I have written about it before and will do so and repeat once more again!

Copy Singapore's Housing Development Board (HDB) model and provide affordable housing to all NZers who want one.

End of the story.

[SBQ]

No tax on first 10-15k of income. Change tax brackets to take into account last 11 years of inflation. No GST on healthy food ingredients you can use to cook from. Government lead aprenticeship program that would allow businesses to deduct aprentices as a business expense. Mandatory school finance classes that will teach debt is bad and how to save and invest. Let home owners deduct part of the interest on their house.

Review housing NZ residents need for housing. Kick the ones abusing it. Kick out the ones causing issues. Put time limits for benefits for people who are fit to work.

As for property. Relax zoning. Force councils to clear land for development by private sector, in exchange private sector would have to provide percentage of those houses to FHB through Kainga ora. If you build enough, you'll suspend house prices as is happening in Christchurch.

As for HNZ, build tiny homes, apartments, container homes. It is a huge mistake buying houses for social housing.

I'm sure all NZ's gov'ts have looked that these issues. Regarding the income tax exemption limit & no GST on healthy foods, the problem I hear from accountants is it makes the income tax very complicated. When Canada created the GST system, they made foods exempted from this tax. NZ came over and looked at the GST system and brought it over to NZ ; with the exception for simplicity by placing GST on everything at end consumption. Interestingly there is no GST on bank service fees in NZ.

Canada index payments according to inflation. Likewise to investment contributions like their TFSA (Started at $5K / year and how grown to now $6K / year). In fact a lot of the ideas you're saying already exist in Canada. So the real problem is why didn't the NZ gov't copy it? Again the key reason is "in sake for simplicity". Such as NZ residents not requiring to file a tax return every year while in Canada, it's nearly mandatory.

Home owner mortgage interest deductions i'm not a fan of unless the capital gain is taxed. You either run it like a business or you don't. This issue has been hammered in Canada and they found the average person can not file that properly - so better to leave it out and keep the individual principal dwelling as exempt from CGT. But what we have in NZ is it seems that investors into residential properties game it by complaining they can no longer take this mortgage expense deduction while getting away of paying any CGT at the end. This is not fair. But many will disagree saying that it just increases rent which is not the case (again this is not the case in Canada too where taxes are more extreme for those in the rental game; there's a limit to how much more you can increase rent).

Relaxing zones are not the problem. The problem councils have said time and time again is the development cost. Who pays for that like infrastructure? Roadways, sewer, storm water, landscaping, etc. to those new zones? The land owners already pay enough to develop their own roads - but can't ask them to pay for the road ways going in and all the connections? I believe the RMA needs to be changed so that we build UP and not build single story everywhere. But the RMA is just that - it restricts all development going up and adds HUGE costs to compliance and 'notified public resource consents'.

Tiny homes are a waste of time. They don't add real value to the land and are not considered real 'improvements' to the land as they are suppose to be 'temporary' buildings (hence being moveable). In Canada welfare / dole recipients go into gov't housing which is.. MULTISTORY complexes, many nicer than the Somerset / Ryman offerings in NZ to the elderly. The high density living gives low income families no benefit to having their 'own back yard', no ability to park their own vehicles, no pets, ; like they say, when you are poor "you are really poor" and anything else is not a necessity. Keep in mind, the gov't owns these mass complexes and they integrate these buildings within wealthier communities too, so their children go to the same school where the wealthy send their children to.

Have a look what Vancouver is doing:

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/1552...sing?auto=true

Compare Vancouver's city landscape the Auckland. There should be no reason why most of Auckland is developed on single story dwellings. All because the RMA restricts everything (and no, i'm sick of the excuse that if you don't have the income, go move to South Auckland where dwellings cost a lot less). The high price neighborhoods NEED intensive high density building.

[peetter]

I'm sure all NZ's gov'ts have looked that these issues. Regarding the income tax exemption limit & no GST on healthy foods, the problem I hear from accountants is it makes the income tax very complicated. When Canada created the GST system, they made foods exempted from this tax. NZ came over and looked at the GST system and brought it over to NZ ; with the exception for simplicity by placing GST on everything at end consumption. Interestingly there is no GST on bank service fees in NZ.

Canada index payments according to inflation. Likewise to investment contributions like their TFSA (Started at $5K / year and how grown to now $6K / year). In fact a lot of the ideas you're saying already exist in Canada. So the real problem is why didn't the NZ gov't copy it? Again the key reason is "in sake for simplicity". Such as NZ residents not requiring to file a tax return every year while in Canada, it's nearly mandatory.

Home owner mortgage interest deductions i'm not a fan of unless the capital gain is taxed. You either run it like a business or you don't. This issue has been hammered in Canada and they found the average person can not file that properly - so better to leave it out and keep the individual principal dwelling as exempt from CGT. But what we have in NZ is it seems that investors into residential properties game it by complaining they can no longer take this mortgage expense deduction while getting away of paying any CGT at the end. This is not fair. But many will disagree saying that it just increases rent which is not the case (again this is not the case in Canada too where taxes are more extreme for those in the rental game; there's a limit to how much more you can increase rent).

Relaxing zones are not the problem. The problem councils have said time and time again is the development cost. Who pays for that like infrastructure? Roadways, sewer, storm water, landscaping, etc. to those new zones? The land owners already pay enough to develop their own roads - but can't ask them to pay for the road ways going in and all the connections? I believe the RMA needs to be changed so that we build UP and not build single story everywhere. But the RMA is just that - it restricts all development going up and adds HUGE costs to compliance and 'notified public resource consents'.

Tiny homes are a waste of time. They don't add real value to the land and are not considered real 'improvements' to the land as they are suppose to be 'temporary' buildings (hence being moveable). In Canada welfare / dole recipients go into gov't housing which is.. MULTISTORY complexes, many nicer than the Somerset / Ryman offerings in NZ to the elderly. The high density living gives low income families no benefit to having their 'own back yard', no ability to park their own vehicles, no pets, ; like they say, when you are poor "you are really poor" and anything else is not a necessity. Keep in mind, the gov't owns these mass complexes and they integrate these buildings within wealthier communities too, so their children go to the same school where the wealthy send their children to.

Have a look what Vancouver is doing:

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/1552...sing?auto=true

Compare Vancouver's city landscape the Auckland. There should be no reason why most of Auckland is developed on single story dwellings. All because the RMA restricts everything (and no, i'm sick of the excuse that if you don't have the income, go move to South Auckland where dwellings cost a lot less). The high price neighborhoods NEED intensive high density building.

All I see here are excuses.

Adding a second tier to GST is completely normal in most of the world and something your POS software system will solve for you. The same is with tax returns, you'll add couple of fields to current automatic system and you're done.

Infrastructure - we pay enough in taxes, developers pay horendous amounts of money for consents. Government is just so inefficient they use most for just running itself. And I never said the developments should be low density.

Tiny homes are better solution than motels before you develop enough apartment buildings.

[Balance]

We are witnessing government’s intervention in the housing & accommodation market on a massive scale - with bugger all impact.

Might as well go the whole hog and adopt the Singapore HDB model - affordable housing for all. Better spent of the tens of billions of dollars wasted currently on ill conceived and piece meal solutions.

[fungus pudding]

All I see here are excuses.

Adding a second tier to GST is completely normal in most of the world and something your POS software system will solve for you. The same is with tax returns, you'll add couple of fields to current automatic system and you're done.

Infrastructure - we pay enough in taxes, developers pay horendous amounts of money for consents. Government is just so inefficient they use most for just running itself. And I never said the developments should be low density.

Tiny homes are better solution than motels before you develop enough apartment buildings.

Leave GST well alone. It's the best system for a sales tax in the planet. NZ has been widely praised for its 'no exemption' system.

[SBQ]

All I see here are excuses.

Adding a second tier to GST is completely normal in most of the world and something your POS software system will solve for you. The same is with tax returns, you'll add couple of fields to current automatic system and you're done.

Infrastructure - we pay enough in taxes, developers pay horendous amounts of money for consents. Government is just so inefficient they use most for just running itself. And I never said the developments should be low density.

Tiny homes are better solution than motels before you develop enough apartment buildings.

You may not run your own business but I can assure you the exemptions do add up a lot of time for accountants to figure out. It's not as simple as leaving it to the accounting software to work out it : and why should small businesses rely on it? It's like Xero marketing their payment accounting system to small businesses in the same way as marketing Ferraris to Toyota owners. Translates to a lot of $ spent on something less productive. I think in the past threads we've battled this issue on GST exemptions of food before and I will agree, the 'simplicity' seems to fit nice in NZ; we're a small nation that should not have the vast accounting complexities as the larger nations.

To give you an idea, in Canada no one files a tax return manually on paper. The computations and wording is FAR FAR too complex for the layman that it's pretty much mandatory to use tax filing software. Just like Canada's vast open land and county side, so is their income tax act. Almost every angle you look at has exemptions of some sort. Exemptions for disable people, exemptions for small businesses in certain sectors, exemptions in farming, exemptions oil & gas explorations, medical exemptions if it exceeds a certain amount ratio to the person's low income. It's VAAAAAST! The question I ask here in NZ is do WE need such complexities?

A 'Tiny Home' is no different to a large motorhome and should not be created as a substitute for a proper home. I agree the NZ gov't is slow at the housing issue by WINZ recipients and it's easier to hire out the motels. But the ultimate root problem still lies in NZ's RMA because if you look at how Vancouver is building 'social housing' - those kinds of projects are well beyond what the NZ RMA would ever allow.

So is the problems we have in NZ due to a lack of planning and foresight or, a lack of resources?

[peetter]

Look you asked for suggestions, I gave them. Maybe they are not ideal (took me about 10 minutes on top of my head), but everything is better than solving everything by raising taxes like current government does.

I think you're correct in saying there's no planning. Nobody with balls to actually start huge projects that are necessary.

[Panda-NZ-]

Well we have to fund the shortfall from selling assets for 1/3 of their current value in a recession. fiscal wizards.

National provided 25c to those on the lowest incomes in a growing economy.
50c if they wanted to splurge a bit lol.

[iceman]

Well we have to fund the shortfall from selling assets for 1/3 of their current value in a recession. fiscal wizards.

National provided 25c to those on the lowest incomes in a growing economy.
50c if they wanted to splurge a bit lol.

Too funny. The remaining Government shares in the assets you refer to are worth a lot more than the companies were back when in full Government ownership. It was indeed a very smart move.
No idea what you're referring to with 25c & 50c but no doubt it makes sense to you

[fungus pudding]

Too funny. The remaining Government shares in the assets you refer to are worth a lot more than the companies were back when in full Government ownership. It was indeed a very smart move.
No idea what you're referring to with 25c & 50c but no doubt it makes sense to you

I never know what he/she/it is on about. I doubt if any other posters do either.