Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the party’s tax policy is still a live discussion after the Labour Party social media account shared an account of a party meeting where former Revenue Minister David Parker allegedly discussed something called a Capital Income Tax.
Hipkins confirmed members were discussing a range of taxes.
“There’s a lot of conversation within the Labour Party at the moment around different forms of taxation: capital gains tax, wealth tax, combinations of the two, land taxes,” Hipkins said.
“If you look at capital gains tax and wealth tax, they sit on the same spectrum. It’s about taxing capital and they are variants of a similar theme.” . .
The Taxpayers’ Union is slamming the Labour Party following reports that the party is actively considering adopting a capital gains tax or wealth tax policy.
Taxpayers’ Union Policy and Public Affairs Manager, James Ross, said:
“Envy taxes like these are really taxes on entrepreneurship, innovation and risk taking. A tax on wealth or capital would send our best and brightest packing, taking jobs and businesses with them.
“Pitting New Zealanders against each other might be Labour’s politics, but it is certainly not what’s best for our country.
“If Labour really cared about inequality, they would have focused on spiralling housing costs when they had an unprecedented single-party majority. If Labour cared about balancing the budget, they would have cut the billions of dollars of wasteful spending that was occurring under Grant Robertson. They did neither, and are now resorting to lazy envy politics to blame wealth creators for the problems they caused in government.
“If Chris Hipkins is serious about leading the country again, he needs to unequivocally rule out introducing any form of envy tax in New Zealand.”
Labour hasn’t learned that the quality of spending is far more important than the quantity.
Labour hasn’t learned that one of the reasons they lost power was because they overtaxed and overspent.
Labour hasn’t learned that they are not better at using other people’s money than those from whom they take it.
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Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
A realised capital gains tax is hardly an envy tax, given that everybody in the country is capable of earning a capital gain. Besides, the capital/revenue distinction is an arbitrary bookkeeping rule necessary because we like to measure "income" on an annual basis. But a realised capital gain is still income, but generally goes untaxed. So the clever folk try hard to earn only realised capital gains. Why are we the only developed country in the world to think that's fair?
Anonymous 1:48pm perhaps it has something to do with the fact that for many people accumulating and realising capital gains actually involves a fair degree of both risk and damn hard work. There is no magical money tree. How about taxing gangs, drug dealers and wealthy iwi corporates who currently benefit from tax free charity status while tax payers carry the can for Maori health, welfare, marae maintenance, te reo, haka competitions etc, etc, etc. How is that fair? There’s more than one side to this debate. Call me the devil for playing his advocate.
Anonymous 1:48pm - CGT is effectively taxing inflation. Oh and we already have a wealth tax - its called rates which is taxed on top (GST)
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