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Robert MacCulloch
Robert MacCulloch is a native of New Zealand and worked at the Reserve Bank of NZ before he travelled to the UK to complete a PhD in Economics at Oxford University.
The Herald and Radio NZ owe the nation an apology. Their reporting has hit new lows. No wonder people don’t trust the mainstream media. They reported on their front pages, “Labour closing in on National in latest Ipsos issues poll, with 65% support for capital gains tax.” At best it’s a misleading headline; at worst it’s a blatant untruth.
Then they go on to say, in a bit more detail, that the Ipsos Poll “found almost two-thirds of NZ’ers support a capital gains tax in some form”. But Ipsos never asked its 1,000 survey respondents the question, “Do you support a capital gains tax in some form?” And wording in surveys is everything. Every word matters, since it can bias respondents. In fact, Ipsos asked, “Would you support the introduction of a Capital Gains Tax in the following situations? (1) Sale of an investment property? (2) Sale of a business? (3) Sales of other assets like boats, cars and paintings? (4) Sale of a family home.” The proportions supporting were 57 per cent, 43 per cent, 22 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively.
There’s only (narrow) majority support for one asset class – investment properties – and NZ already has capital taxes on them (ones that come under the bright-line test). Faced with this failure to show much public support for capital taxes, what Ipsos (sneakily) did and the Herald (sneakily) reported does not even come from the answer to a survey question. Instead it came from a calculation that was made up and contrived – they added up the number of people who ticked any one (or more) of the above four categories. That’s how they arrived at their “65% support capital gains in one of these forms” number.
To see how misleading is the Herald’s story (journos also confronted the PM with the “65% support number”), then answer the following question: do you think that only 35 per cent of Kiwis oppose Capital Gains Taxes (being 100 per cent minus 65 per cent)? If you think the answer is ‘yes’, its wrong. The answers to the question, ‘Would you not support the introduction of a Capital Gains Tax in the following situations? (1) Sale of an investment property; (2) Sale of a business; (3) Sales of other assets like boats, cars & paintings; (4) Sale of a family home", are 32 per cent, 41 per cent, 64 per cent and 78 per cent, respectively, of respondents. So clear majorities in two out of four categories show no support.
Although Big Media did not report it, I estimate about 90 per cent of Kiwis object to Capital Gains Taxes on at least one of these asset classes (often several). Whereas the Herald reported that Ipsos “found almost two-thirds of New Zealanders support a capital gains tax in some form”, the headline could equally have been Ipsos “found almost 90 per cent of New Zealanders oppose a capital gains tax in some form”. Big Media’s Plot to get capital taxes put in and Labour re-elected on that platform makes me suspect its in cahoots with Labour at some horribly unpleasant and deeply disturbing level: one that needs investigation.
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This article was originally published by Down to Earth Kiwi.
