Ele Ludemann: Land tax will fuel higher food prices & inflation

Federated Farmers has worked out the costs of the Opportunity Party’s land tax:

• A single dairy farmer would be $16, 215 worse off each year ($312 a week)

• A dairy farming couple under 65 would be $3185 better off each year ($61 a week)

• A dairy farmer over 65 would be $35,615 worse off each year ($685 a week)

• A single sheep and beef farmer would be $28,511 worse off each year ($528 a week)

• A sheep and beef farming couple under 65 would be $9111 worse off each year ($175 a week)

• A sheep and beef farmer over the age of 65 would be $47,911 worse off each year ($921 a week)

TOP’s tax policy would be an absolute disaster for rural New Zealand, sucking hundreds of millions of dollars out of farmers’ pockets every year.

To make matters worse, it’s not even based on income; it’s based on the value of land, with absolutely no consideration for a farmer’s ability to pay for it.

You’ll know as well as I do that most farmers are asset-rich, cash-poor, and carry a lot of debt.

What frustrates me most about this whole debate is that it’s all framed around how we can tax and redistribute wealth, rather than how we can actually grow the economy.

The big issues for most Kiwi families this election are the economy and cost of living.

A growing and productive primary sector can help improve both those issues, but not if it’s getting taxed to death from all angles!

The land tax would be a tax imposed regardless of, and unrelated to, income and it would be imposed in bad years when farms might make losses.

It would also be imposed on the businesses which supply and service farmers and process their produce.

Farmers and businesses might absorb some of that cost but eventually it would be passed onto consumers through higher food prices and that would fuel inflation.

A party that plans this much economic harm and wants to tax more without first reducing waste should not be let anywhere near the treasury benches.

Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.