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The Government has hit out at Labour for using misleading figures when claiming its policy of reinstating interest deductions for landlords would create a class of landlord millionaires, a claim it has repeated on and off since the election campaign.
In a press release from the weekend, Labour’s Finance spokeswoman Barbara Edmonds said the policy, which allows landlords to reduce their tax bill by deducting interest costs would “give approximately 346 landlords who own at least 200 properties each around $464 million between them”.
Housing Minister Chris Bishop looked into the claim and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development published data from an Official Information Act (OIA) request which shows that that number cannot be substantiated with current data and is very likely incorrect. The OIA request is from last year and was not publicly available, meaning Labour could not have used it to find correct figures, although the Government argues it should have known not to use a number that could not be substantiated.
The number comes from a story published by the Stuff website in 2021, which was included in a piece of CTU economic analysis written during the election campaign that analysed how much landlords would get from the Government’s interest deductibility policy.
NZ Herald
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