Christopher Luxon, New Zealand Prime Minister 2023

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Forums › Politics › Christopher Luxon, New Zealand Prime Minister 2023

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#3373576 15-May-2025 13:19

SaltyNZ:

Just like any other tax, it's a trade off for much wider societal benefits that even those who might pay a once-in-a-lifetime inheritance tax bill will enjoy.

Those would be the wider societal benefits that the exploding Crown revenues over recent years haven't been able to shift the dial on, in any meaningful way.

I think the worst part is that despite years of evidence that spending more and more and taxing more and more (by means of not indexing), we'll somehow get to a point where all this clicks into place, when the reality seems to be that Crown revenues grow, NZers pay more and more of their real incomes as a portion of tax and we fail to see any real improvement, let alone inroads in what would be an absolutely massive work program, when we couldn't even get a metre of tramline built for a rapid transit network in our biggest city over the course of six years.

I guess after years of being gaslight over broken election promises and the essentially extinct notion of political accountability, you'd have a hard time convincing me to pay a stack more tax for what will suddenly be a superior outcome - I'm guessing by way of magic or some other supernatural force.

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sir1963

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#3373577 15-May-2025 13:24

SaltyNZ:

I did ask Marama Davidson about that last night. The answer is to simply remember what it gets you. For example, my wife and I would pay more income tax ... but also her $6000 root canal would be free, our daughter's GP visits and prescriptions would be free, and our son would receive more while studying than he currently earns cleaning out the deep fryers at 1am at McDonalds. So overall, it's a net win.

$6000 for a root canal ? No way.

I go to a GP 4 times a year, so $240 is "savings", my prescription fees top out at $100 a year.

Study payments should only go to those who pass a paper, the Universities "1st year free"...about 50% don't go to the 2nd year, so a waste of tax payers money.

Personally I would prefer to feed children at school , have proper footwear, clothing, have reduced class sizes, have special needs teachers in each school (both for those will a learning disability and for those who are well above their age group in knowledge), ensure that teachers are actually qualified in Maths, Science with an actual Degree, and THEN they can go teaching. Works well in Finland .

I would also prefer a health ACC system, no one chooses to get Cancer, Parkinson's, Long Covid, MS, etc etc etc. These people are just as disabled as someone who has had an accident , however the funding and outcomes are vastly different.

Try getting a knee replacement, you could be on a waiting list for many many years chewing up Tax payer money for pain killers, doctors visits , referrals that get returned etc etc etc. You pay for it privately $30,000 , on ACC...happens faster and costs $0

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#3373598 15-May-2025 15:01

sir1963:

Personally I would prefer to feed children at school , have proper footwear, clothing, have reduced class sizes, have special needs teachers in each school (both for those will a learning disability and for those who are well above their age group in knowledge), ensure that teachers are actually qualified in Maths, Science with an actual Degree, and THEN they can go teaching. Works well in Finland .

I would also prefer a health ACC system, no one chooses to get Cancer, Parkinson's, Long Covid, MS, etc etc etc. These people are just as disabled as someone who has had an accident , however the funding and outcomes are vastly different.

Try getting a knee replacement, you could be on a waiting list for many many years chewing up Tax payer money for pain killers, doctors visits , referrals that get returned etc etc etc. You pay for it privately $30,000 , on ACC...happens faster and costs $0

Well - read the rest of the document. For one thing, restarting the previous school lunch program is explictly one of the things it will fund, as is your wish for ACC.

Transform ACC into an Agency for Comprehensive Care, ensuring everyone out of paid work because of a health condition or disability has an income of at least 80% of the full-time minimum wage

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SaltyNZ

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#3373641 15-May-2025 18:46

GV27:

Those would be the wider societal benefits that the exploding Crown revenues over recent years haven't been able to shift the dial on, in any meaningful way.

I think the worst part is that despite years of evidence that spending more and more and taxing more and more (by means of not indexing),

I think the worst part is giving in to nihilism. Yeah, the two main parties have been universally execrable for decades. That's why I'm not a member of either of them. The answer is not to just shrug and say 'nothing works, we're all f***ed, at least stop taxing me.' That's quitter talk; worse, it's failing talk, because you can't opt out, you're here with several million other people, and if their lives are miserable they'll sure as hell make yours miserable too.

You are correct when you say that spending more money is not a guarantee of success. But spending less money is a guarantee of failure. If you want a government that provides anything other than 4-lane motorways between mouldy houses, vote for someone else. Because look around, that's what you're getting for your $20 a fortnight tax cut.

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#3373644 15-May-2025 19:00

SaltyNZ: Yes, that will happen. But again - NZ is unusual here in being one of the few where it doesn't have any sort of inheritance or capital gains tax. My father and I were having very similar conversations only a couple of weeks ago about their house in Penrith (Aus).

Australian CGT is nuanced and has multiple choice options for exemptions. I'm sure you're already aware of all that. There is no aus inheritance tax. As I understand it aus CGT will potentially apply if a home is sold after an inheritance and things like that.

I'm generally supportive of those things you mentioned and they're both worth looking at. Imo it's a good indicitive policy for an election and a good basis for negotiation for a coalition.

Tax policy makers do need to be aware hay will be made out of any failure to add nuance and detail, and that hay will be rolled in for as long as possible up to and including an election.

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#3373648 15-May-2025 19:22

gzt:
Australian CGT is nuanced and has multiple choice options for exemptions. I'm sure you're already aware of all that.

Yes, he's an accountant though so if he thinks there would be CGT on the sale I assume he knows what he's talking about.

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GV27

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#3373667 16-May-2025 07:40

SaltyNZ:

I think the worst part is giving in to nihilism. Yeah, the two main parties have been universally execrable for decades. That's why I'm not a member of either of them. The answer is not to just shrug and say 'nothing works, we're all f***ed, at least stop taxing me.' That's quitter talk; worse, it's failing talk, because you can't opt out, you're here with several million other people, and if their lives are miserable they'll sure as hell make yours miserable too.

You are correct when you say that spending more money is not a guarantee of success. But spending less money is a guarantee of failure. If you want a government that provides anything other than 4-lane motorways between mouldy houses, vote for someone else. Because look around, that's what you're getting for your $20 a fortnight tax cut.

In my personal case, it's not a case of 'stop taxing me' - just more how much more of the actual tax burden do they expect people in my position to keep fronting up. For professional millennials, we're not making super huge money, we've taken on huge debt to buy what are in many cases, decidedly average houses after paying off reasonably chunky student loans, are now approaching or turning 40 and have pushed ourselves to make what are historically high incomes, but in reality only just cover the basics.

The irony of being disqualified from most state assistance if you have enough to qualify for a mortgage, yet having to push it out to a 30 year term to make it affordable if you're also covering daycare, yet being told you now have to kick in even more is starting to get pretty miserable. Federal inheritance tax in the States kicks in at what, $5M USD? Yet in NZ I can have a 4 bedroom townhouse in Auckland dragged into the net because a political party wants to make it out like I'm Warren Buffet for earning enough to cover my expenses here and now - and that's before we get to any retirement savings I might need to actually live off in the event the pension becomes means-tested, because after a lifetime of work, I probably won't qualify for that either.

Unfortunately the tax system currently (and even more so under the Green Budget) relies on a lot people in a similar situation not just deciding things are too hard and a quality of life upgrade can't be had somewhere else, including a lot of the professionals we're going to need to make things like functional GP and Dental services work.

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#3373669 16-May-2025 08:35

GV27:

In my personal case, it's not a case of 'stop taxing me' - just more how much more of the actual tax burden do they expect people in my position to keep fronting up.

Well, as I said, I actually 100% agree on that point and think they should have leaned much more on the wealth tax and laid off the income tax.

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#3373682 16-May-2025 09:47

SaltyNZ:

GV27:

In my personal case, it's not a case of 'stop taxing me' - just more how much more of the actual tax burden do they expect people in my position to keep fronting up.

Well, as I said, I actually 100% agree on that point and think they should have leaned much more on the wealth tax and laid off the income tax.

Well you could start with taxing churches.

How about the billions of dollars made by overseas companies which pay $0 tax in NZ because the operate out of Australia.

How about a progressive tax on businesses, 80% of people are employed in companies of 20 or fewer staff.

How about we ensure big business pays their fair share of fire levies rather than gaming the system.

How about we have a "green' recycling tax, each product is assessed for the cost to properly recycle, that price gets added onto the retail price along with a small "deposit" that gets given back to the owner when the item goes in for recycling. The costs are prepaid

so they can pay for the actual recycling . Cheap crap that's harder to recycle will cost more, so better choices will be made.

GV27

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#3373697 16-May-2025 10:08

SaltyNZ:

Well, as I said, I actually 100% agree on that point and think they should have leaned much more on the wealth tax and laid off the income tax.

I would have been generally a lot more on board with the wealth taxes and inheritances if they'd been set at sensible or reasonable benchmarks; i.e. above average house prices, relief in the event of occupying inherited family homes, using similar thresholds for estate duties to other jurisdictions or even excluding the value of the family home occupied at the time of death. These are generally why these taxes work in other jurisdictions and the lack of these kind of details is something I've often lamented when it comes to the tax reform debate here. It tends to be more about dragging as much into the net as possible, rather than making sure the net is catching the fish you actually want to be catching.

There's not much nuance needed to make these things more acceptable to the wider electorate and it would have made their argument that they were taxing wealth to ensure people were paying a 'fair share' seem a bit more genuine to people who would otherwise have been tempted to write this off as an exercise in energising your existing base.

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#3373763 16-May-2025 15:32

sir1963:

Well you could start with taxing churches.

How about the billions of dollars made by overseas companies which pay $0 tax in NZ because the operate out of Australia.

How about a progressive tax on businesses, 80% of people are employed in companies of 20 or fewer staff.

How about we ensure big business pays their fair share of fire levies rather than gaming the system.

How about we have a "green' recycling tax, each product is assessed for the cost to properly recycle, that price gets added onto the retail price along with a small "deposit" that gets given back to the owner when the item goes in for recycling. The costs are prepaid

so they can pay for the actual recycling . Cheap crap that's harder to recycle will cost more, so better choices will be made.

With some obvious exceptions *cough*Brian Tamaki*cough* I doubt that taxing churches will add any value. Churches and the organisations they run are critically important providers of social services. There won't be much if anything to tax because everything they 'earn' goes to running those services. And if you tax them anyway so that they can no longer afford to run those services, then you lose the services and have to provide them some other way.

I absolutely think there should be progressive taxes on businesses. We have progressive taxes on personal income, it's mad we don't have it on businesses. They already get a freebie by being taxed on profit rather than income like people are. Switching to tax on revenue would also help with companies avoiding tax by operating out of country - you earned the revenue here, you pay the tax here, regardless of how you cook the books to make it look like you made a loss.

And the recycling tax/fee - I think there might already be some of that in selected products but yes it should be rolled out everywhere.

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#3373767 16-May-2025 16:22

SaltyNZ:

With some obvious exceptions *cough*Brian Tamaki*cough* I doubt that taxing churches will add any value. Churches and the organisations they run are critically important providers of social services. There won't be much if anything to tax because everything they 'earn' goes to running those services. And if you tax them anyway so that they can no longer afford to run those services, then you lose the services and have to provide them some other way.

I absolutely think there should be progressive taxes on businesses. We have progressive taxes on personal income, it's mad we don't have it on businesses. They already get a freebie by being taxed on profit rather than income like people are. Switching to tax on revenue would also help with companies avoiding tax by operating out of country - you earned the revenue here, you pay the tax here, regardless of how you cook the books to make it look like you made a loss.

And the recycling tax/fee - I think there might already be some of that in selected products but yes it should be rolled out everywhere.

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Others own significant commercial realestate. I think church buildings are also rates exempt.

I also believe that government departments (except police for some reason) are also rates exempt.

sir1963

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#3373768 16-May-2025 16:36

Winston Peters, what a disgusting person.

He is NZs own Trump.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360690905/winston-peters-calls-hipkins-sausage-eater

If you can get suspended for doing a Haka, then you should get suspended for this level of vileness too.
Only he won't because someone needs his votes. And I do not care which side of the isle anyone is, denigrating people is off limits.

gzt

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#3373771 16-May-2025 17:10

Extremely bizarre because Hipkins is on record recently
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/501198/chris-hipkins-reveals-more-details-about-partner-toni-grace
Peters' comment is just silly and insulting to everyone really. Looks like Peters is trolling for a reaction of any kind. The comment was not made during parliament. Peters is at no risk of suspension.

tdgeek

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#3373772 16-May-2025 17:20

gzt: Extremely bizarre because Hipkins is on record recently
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/501198/chris-hipkins-reveals-more-details-about-partner-toni-grace
Peters' comment is just silly and insulting to everyone really. Looks like Peters is trolling for a reaction of any kind. The comment was not made during parliament. Peters is at no risk of suspension.

Peters went off at the C word incident, and apparently the dress code in Parliament. But its apparently ok if he plays gutter politics...

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