Ten tips to tax NZ out of dire straits

I am economically ignorant, but I admire Bernards idea of a flat tax on land to incentivise investment in capital and business ideas and stem the sickening, toxic, get-rich-quick property investment culture.

Agriculture, brains and business acumen will see us through this recession that greedy, untalented property investors caused.

There are many intelligent engineers with vision in NZ that will return great dividends on the capital investment spent on their ideas. It's time for the unintelligent, uneducated property speculators to step aside.

I look forward to a time when people with talent and a contribution to make to the GDP are more important than uneducated, gambling, property speculators.

Looks like GaryA turned left at Leningrad rather than going straight at St Petersberg. His talk of exploitation is laughably immature.

There is very little equitable about progressive tax rates, what is does encourage is tax avoidance at a minimum and tax evasion at the extreme. Most people don't mind paying their fair share of tax. but baulk at being penalised for their hard work and success to pay for those who aren't contributing much to the country other than more beneficiaries.

There is plenty of land and property in NZ to cater for all NZers, two ways to cool speculation and property asset bubbles are:

1) limit residential land ownership to NZ citizens and permanent residents; this would bring to an end the hawking of developments to overseas buyers who see them as pure investments (this might affect Shania Twain though.

2) Put an end to all kinds of tax relief on second properties. Why should speculators benefit from their gambling?

Prolonged secondary, vocational and tertiary education need to be made universally available to incentivise people and to give everyone decent opportunities to improve theirs and their families' outlooks.

Good work Bernard

Tax grandma for having a large garden, tell her she can't retire til 70, and comfort her by letting her know that the yobbo who just vandalised her letterbox is getting a free tertiary education and the finance company director who milked her retirement savings just got a $40,000 tax cut.

Oh but nice Mr Hickey is offering grandma a couple of thousand dollars tax back but watch out he'll grab an extra couple of hundred in GST! But this tax refund is only if Bernard's budget adds up which I'm not sure it does when Finance Minister Bernard is offering over $10b in tax cuts funded by less than $1b GST increase and a land tax that was designed to stop people hoarding land in land scarce Hong Kong, which in NZ will tax people who can't afford to pay.

Are you clear what you mean by a property tax? You cite Hong Kong as your example. However, the HK property tax is not an ad valorem tax, but an income tax on rental income. The rate is 16 per cent on the annual rent receivable less a statutory deduction of 20 per cent for repairs and outgoings.

This isn't going to affect speculators who buy negatively or neutrally geared property in order to make money on an increase in equity. There is even the potential for it to incentivise negative gearing to avoid the property tax. Given real estate speculation habits in New Zealand, I bet it would.

If you mean something else, a flat tax on property such as the current council rates system, then it's a terrible idea. It has both worse outcomes and is less politically palatable than a capital gains tax.

I like some of your ideas, but not all. One tax idea that I have always favoured is a 'Transaction Tax' on banking transactions, as a means of creating a level playing tax field, plus its very easy and cheap to administer. I am not in favour of increasing GST as it it is an unfair tax. To increase it would hurt badly those on low incomes (EG:food and medical)and where it falls down is not everyone pays it. When you are in business you get off paying it almost altogether, so,unfairly it is paid by those whose only income is wages. I would like to see GST almost (if not) abolished and a transaction tax brought in instead.

And YES revamp IR, Justice, Police (as top priorities) plus a lot more and eliminate their extravagant wasteful costs.some of these depts think they deserve a bottomless bucket of cash and need to get real.They are now pseudo gov't dept's as they have now become self perpetuating industries and this has to stop.

Try to aim for gov't dept's that mostly add value and productivity to NZ, not be a place to keep those that would otherwise be unemployed.