- 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.
6 comments:
Those indoctrinated by cultural Marxism and the politics of envy do not understand the word s " economic productivity". But
" wealth re-distribution" whips them into a frenzy as they anticipate even more free money and benefits to support their life of victimhood and sloth.
And if that's not bad enough, the economic cost of holding larger residential sites will force redevelopment - hastening the loss of trees and reducing biodiversity in our cities. Is this what we want for NZ - streets crammed with little boxes like a 'Coronation Street'? Such a policy has unintended consequences written all over it, but it'll appeal to the ne'er do wells of this world - those that only think of more immediate self-gratification, rather than the longer term impacts on the world around them.
Wong has admitted ( Duncan Garner podcast, August 28) that the Land Tax is a non starter (for ten years at least). Without the Land Tax there is no money for the Universal Basic Income ( the one TOP policy that’s driving polling results from the have-nots in society)
Without Land Tax and the UBI, TOP is nothing but an empty shell, of no more value than the seventy or so other minor parties (Bill and Ben, or MacGillicuddy Serious Parties anyone?) that have come and gone since MMP kicked off.
This is not new. We have a land tax. It is called rates.
And it is doubly regressive and self contradictory.
There was a case where a ratepayer argued that rates are for services and if services are not provided then rates can be reduced.
The judge found rates are a tax.
But if rates are a tax what do they attract goods and services tax?
So it is both a tax and not a tax. Don’t you love government?
Hopefully reality will prove you right anon@7.38, for they're also all for the likes of He Puapua, and that won't end well for NZ either. They're a true Trojan Horse, but it's amazing how the concept of free money and a pleasant smile can fool the young and the stupid - just look at the polls. The Greens are living proof of it.
Peter
I thought that Weeds should be eradicated.
Why are TPM and TOP still there to stir the dirtpot with their stupidity and some people believing in this ......
And lets NOT talk Labour, they AND the media are scared stiff to be called RACISTS
which unfortunately they are. Even Mr Luxen is very quied.
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