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The Prime Minister considers himself wealthy. I am sure he is. His reasoning is interesting.
“I regard myself as wealthy in the sense that when I go to the supermarket, I don’t have to worry about paying the bill when I get to the checkout”,[sic] Hipkins told AM’s Ryan Bridge on Wednesday.
newshub.co.nz
And so the Prime Minister gauges wealth against being able to afford food. This, admittedly, is becoming more difficult and is a struggle for many; however, the sacrifices made to feed families means most of us are considered by the PM as demonstrably wealthy. If you can afford a cauliflower, give thanks as you turn it into a cheesy dish (if you can afford the cheese, that is) – you are wealthy.
Why do we accept a race to the bottom as being aspirational for New Zealand? Shouldn’t we be trying to increase the overall wealth of the country instead of punishing those who dare to have successful businesses, and who invest in its development? If the supermarket checkout is his only measure, many of us in the country could be described as being wealthy – and thus presumably our PM thinks, ready, willing and able to be taxed more to satisfy the insatiable appetite this government has for our money. Congestion tax, capital gains tax, wealth tax, inheritance tax – all on the table for their consideration. With the collapsing house market, there won’t be any capital gain to tax – a capital loss refund may be far more applicable. And a congestion charge – neglect the roads, make them slow and pot-holed, and impassable in many instances, cause congestion and then tax us for trying to get to work on time.
And David Parker and the headlines smugly report that the wealthy pay only 8.9% against 20.2% of the rest of us – excluding the massive number of wealthy: “Wealthiest paying tax at much lower rate than most other New Zealanders”.
Reports from IRD and Treasury released on Wednesday show the median effective tax rate was just 8.9 percent for the richest 311 families in New Zealand.
newshub.co.nz
And who were these families who were put under such scrutiny? How can that intrusive, over-reaching interference be remotely fair?
It was able to do this thanks to an amendment to the Tax Administration Act which allowed them to compel those selected to reveal the scale of their asset portfolios.
thespinoff.co.nz
As David Seymour says:
People should ask themselves, would they accept a government that used such intrusive powers to find out what beneficiaries spend their money on, or middle-income households? Why, then, is it ok to go after people if they have money? How, then, does it fit with Kiwi values to only go after people if they’re successful?
msn.com
Inland Revenue said a major difference was people on low to middle incomes tended to make most of their money through income that is taxed directly – that rate depended on the amount individuals earned.
Well, there’s a surprise. Ground-breaking analysis by the genius of IRD. We would not have been able to work that out for ourselves.
It said personal taxable income was only a “small part of the economic income of the wealthiest New Zealand families”, with most coming from “increases in the value of businesses, property and financial portfolios they own or control”, and the picture changes when that was all taken into account, referred to as “economic income”.
msn.com
Economic Income Income over and above what covers a person’s or company’s bare essentials. For example, if, covering one’s rent, food, and other basic expenses, one has a certain amount of money left over, this is one’s economic income. One can spend his/her economic income and not endanger one’s financial position. Emphasis as written.
definition of economic income – Search (bing.com)
Are we being threatened with being able to afford just the bare essentials, before the mighty tax man (or woman – should Chris Hipkins eventually work out what a woman is) finds a way to take the rest?
David Parker did go on to say that the super wealthy did actually pay a higher tax rate than the rest of us struggling to afford cheese or eggs on the tax applied to our actual income, but holds fast to the 8.9% figure that is now making shock waves throughout the lower and middle-income earners and those who receive the largesse of the state. The conflation of personal income and assets is financial sleight of hand. Asset growth, capital gain, is not money; you cannot spend it. You can leverage it, certainly, but that does not make it liquid either. Assets are illiquid. Compare apples with apples, not apples with assets.
But, says Labour, we can, and very likely will, take that capital gain you didn’t work for but that the markets munificently bestowed upon you. Take that, you who dare to achieve and provide employment and deliver services via your business. Take that, those of you who dare to save. Take that, those of you who provide housing via rental properties. Take that, those of you who invest in the stock market to build prosperity – for all.
The left hate wealth, business, property ownership and financial portfolios. They hate high-flyers and those who are self-starters. It is called risk and reward – but they want the risk to be taken by the ‘wealthy’ while they take the reward.
We are being turned into the Venezuela of the Pacific – and the incumbent government have just opened the door ever wider to those who refuse any longer to tolerate the narrow-minded, woke attitudes that will see many depart for better opportunities across the Tasman. And no, not all the grass is greener there, but quite a lot of it is. New Zealand is a small country with a lack of vision, lack of opportunity, high social costs, low wages and a racial divide that will soon be a fully-blown apartheid system – remember when New Zealand stood up against that? But that was New Zealand and so it doesn’t count. Tribal rule here we come. See how well that is working out in Zimbabwe.
As a counter to the IRD report was the Sapere work. In what can be read as a pre-emptive strike against the fundamental basis of the report, Sapere released a report funded by tax consultants OliverShaw. “One of the questions asked is whether the very wealthy pay taxes at the same or higher rate than middle-income earners,” says OliverShaw Principal, Robin Oliver. “This research [from Sapere] shows clearly that, whether you consider taxable income or other measures, such as economic income, the answer is: ‘Yes, they do’.”
Meanwhile in the same Newshub article, headlined “Christopher Luxon won’t say if he thinks uber-rich are paying fair share of tax after Inland Revenue report” it states:
“Christopher Luxon has denounced Inland Revenue’s report into how much tax the wealthiest New Zealanders pay, maintaining the country’s system is already “broadly progressive and just”.
For once I agree with him.
