Wednesday I wrote Department of Mum and Dad (Scoop 14 Aug 2024, or here on Evening Report). I finished by saying that, today, “I will propose a simple affordable solution which better fits centre-right than centre-left philosophies”. Here goes.

My proposal is to pay a personal tax credit of $150 per week to every New Zealand resident aged over 18. The principal mechanism to pay for this would be to remove the 10.5% and 17.5% income tax brackets. The result would be that every New Zealander earning $53,500 or more (per year, before tax) would have an unchanged after-tax income, while some people earning less would get more. The $150 per week is a simple measure of the maximum benefit implicit in those two lower tax brackets.

The second mechanism to fund the PTC is to account for upto the first $150 per week of income support benefits as a personal tax credit. Thus, present beneficiaries would have unchanged weekly disposable incomes.

There would be some minor complexities relating to people who would not be considered to be fulltime beneficiaries. So, for the purposes of this policy proposal:

• Working for Families, the Independent Earner Tax Credit, and New Zealand Superannuation would be classed as benefit income.
• People today earning less than $53,500 before tax would get more than they do now only if they are receiving nil or trivial benefit income.

For an example, a person working 30 hours each week at the minimum wage would have a weekly pre-tax income of at least $694.50; $36,114 per year. Persons grossing this amount with no benefit income would become $42.19 better off with a PTC. If they receive benefits (as defined in the first bullet point above) in excess of $42.19, then the first $42.19 of benefit income would be accounted for as ‘PTC’ rather than as ‘Benefit’. (Such minimum wage workers receiving weekly benefit income above zero but below $42.19 would no longer be receiving benefit income because the PTC would more than compensate for lost benefit.)

Another class of ‘static beneficiary’ of the PTC would be non-employed working-age ‘spouses’ living with their partners, and contributing to society in ways other than labour force participation. They may be caregivers, volunteers, underemployed free-lancers, or start-up entrepreneurs.

Or they may be people recently made redundant. Here we are starting to appreciate the possibilities for the dynamic benefits of the PTC. Today’s recently redundant spouses may be tomorrow’s social or capitalistic entrepreneurs.

Dynamic benefits, which fit near-right philosophies of self-reliance and basic democratic rights

The general idea is that of a hand-up rather than a handout. Though basic democratic rights go beyond that concept of charity; the unconditional $150 (which should be subject to CPI indexation) would be conceived as a democratic right in the same sense as the ‘right to vote’.

The dynamic benefits of this proposal are the ‘behavioural changes’; in particular the substantial reductions of the ‘moral hazards’ inherent in any regime of targeted income-support.

Because the $150 weekly PTC would be received an unconditional right, there would be only minimal bureaucracy required to administer it; that would be a substantial cost saving.

The Department of Mum and Dad could be sure that they would receive at least $150 per week in ‘board’ money for each adult child supported in part or in full by Mum and/or Dad. This would take pressure off Mums and Dads with bougie (ie ‘entitled’) adult children.

Many people hate being clients of MSD. They would prefer to be reliant on their own efforts, and on their private and civil society networks. Under the PTC policy regime, new applicants for income support would decline substantially, with remaining applicants for benefit support being the most needy persons and families.

Personal tax credits could be paid – especially for the cases of adult children living ‘at home’ – directly to accommodation providers (eg Mum or Dad) as contributions to the recipients’ board or rent.

The key point is that newly unemployed persons would retain their weekly entitlements of $150 per week, enough to tide many of them over without having to become beneficiaries. And people who are present beneficiaries would be able to ‘dip their toes’ into the part-time labour force without losing all their present support; targeted support that today incentivises them to continue as beneficiaries. The PTC is an ‘enabling’ rather than a ‘disabling’ form of benefit.

Another way of putting it is that the PTC proposal creates a better balance between ‘carrot’ and ‘stick’. The PTC is the carrot.

Note

We may note that there were ‘personal tax credits’ in New Zealand from the 1973 to 1978 Budgets. They were not the same as my proposed PTC, in that those payments would be ‘upto’ a certain amount rather than the full amount for all. The 1970s’ version failed mainly because they were not adequately indexed to the inflation of that time; and also because they were not enshrined as a democratic right.

Conclusion

If the present government does not pursue this policy, it would be ‘cutting off its nose to spite its face’. The new regime of benefit sanctions is the ‘cutting of the nose’ part. The non-realisation of dynamic benefits by not implementing the policy would be the ‘spiting of the face’.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis have a bottom-line policy of delivering “tax relief” to New Zealand’s “squeezed middle”. Their modest policy is to increase the first three income tax thresholds by 11.5%, representing compensation for about two years of inflation-driven tax increases.

(Labour’s policy, by contrast, was to take advantage of CPI inflation which served as a tax increase – through bracket creep – in addition to the cost-of-living increase. Thus, once adjusting for CPI-inflation, National’s policy is a small real increase in income taxes whereas Labour’s policy was a much larger real increase in income tax.)

For some unknown reason, the methods of financing this modest tax relief became so important in the election campaign that vitally important issues such as tertiary education, healthcare and deteriorating international security were barely mentioned. National included a tone-deaf ‘speculate-and-tax’ housing policy. It now looks that this proposed housing deal is the sticking point in coalition negotiations; and it’s proving costly for the Prime Minister elect.

There is a simple solution. Make one small adjustment to the tax policy. Lower the top income tax threshold from $180,000 to $162,625.

The ‘Achilles Heel’ – the most tone-deaf part of the Luxon/Willis rhetoric – is that the tax policy is for high income earners, as well as for middle-income earners and for two-earner families with children. While the rhetoric emphasises middle-income earners, the policy is not only middle-income earners. All Luxon and Willis have to do is give a little on the ‘high-earners’ part of their policy.

And it’s so easy. By just making a small downwards-adjustment to the top income-tax threshold, the tax cut can be fully clawed back for all persons earning over $180,000 per year. (There would be no change for persons earning under $162,625 per year.) I can only presume that Mr Luxon is not aware of this. Hence, I would judge him to be slightly innumerate.

This would be a policy of no pain and immense political gain. It would be an adjustment which would address the concerns of both ordinary New Zealanders and the elite bean counters. It would be a political win that could offset the likelihood that he will have to ‘swallow the rat’ on his proposed foreign property speculator tax.

The problem of low-income earners

Part of the problem with National’s policy was that it was oversold, with promises of “upto $250 per fortnight” less income tax. Yet the vast majority of couple households would get less than $40.11 per fortnight. And we need to note that these are ‘nominal’ tax decreases, not ‘real’ increases in spending power. (Though they are real increases in spending capacity relative to what Labour was offerring.)

Part of the overselling was the claim of “up to $100 more per fortnight for an average-income household with no children”. I tried out National’s calculator on a few examples of households without children.

• A minimum-wage household with each person working 35-hour weeks ($82,628 per year total gross income). Calculator says $8.62 per fortnight.
• A household with $140,000 total income, split $70,000 each. Calculator says $61.50 per fortnight, meaning each person gets an extra $15.375 per week.
• Same total household income, but with one earner receiving $100,000 and the other $40,000. Calculator says $44.40 per fortnight, meaning each person gets on average an extra $11.10 per week.
• A household with $160,000 total income, split $80,000 each. Calculator says $80.19 per fortnight, meaning each person gets an extra $20.05 per week.
• A household with $360,000 total income, split $180,000 each. Calculator says $80.19 per fortnight, meaning each person gets an extra $20.05 per week.
• A household with $1,000,000 total income, split $500,000 each. Calculator says $80.19 per fortnight, meaning each person gets an extra $20.05 per week.

I was unable to come up with any case where a couple without children could get anything like $100 per fortnight.

Summary of Policy

The core of National’s tax policy is to give individuals earning more than $78,100 per year a nominal tax decrease of $20.05 per week, and other people on or above the minimum wage a lesser amount. It’s modest tax relief for the squeezed middle, the squeezed top, and the unsqueezed. Very little for the most squeezed, though there are some exceptional situations for which families with children will get more than $40.10 per fortnight per couple.

National could easily limit its income-tax relief program to those earning less than $180,000 per year, while still giving the proposed $20.05 tax cut to people earning $160,000 per year. It would be excellent politics. But is Christopher Luxon numerate enough to make this change which should facilitate the coalition negotiations?

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Reference: National will deliver meaningful tax relief, 30 Aug 2023:
https://www.national.org.nz/national_will_deliver_meaningful_tax_relief

Tax calculator: https://www.nationaltaxcalculator.com/2023

There is a sea change happening in the wider electorate in Aotearoa New Zealand which is counter intuitive to what the polls are saying.

On the one hand the public overwhelmingly support much fairer taxation but the polls tell us we will have an Act/National government in a couple of weeks which will increase unfairness in tax.

The simple answer to this contradiction is that people vote against governments rather than for them and Labour are being punished for failure — a party in policy paralysis — unable to get out of its own way and get anything meaningful done.

Spelling this out is a recent poll conducted by Essential Research for the lobby group Better Taxes for a Better Future which shows the big majority of voters want a capital gains tax, a wealth tax, a windfall profits tax and want the wealthy to pay at least the same tax rates as the rest of us. (A survey conducted by IRD earlier this year found the uber rich pay less than half the tax rates the rest of us pay)

Here are the figures:

Wealth tax
A TVNZ poll released last week shows overwhelming support for a wealth tax in line with Green Party policy.

The poll asked eligible voters if they would support or oppose a wealth tax on the assets of New Zealanders with more than $2 million in assets if having the wealth tax meant everyone got free dental care.

A majority — 63 percent — said they would be in support of it, while 28 percent were opposed. The rest did not know or refused to say.

The polls show the ground has shifted dramatically in recent times and has opened the way for Labour’s traditional values (if they have any life left in them) to flourish. The electorate is wanting fairer taxes and have the free-loading rich pay much more.

But Labour under its current and former leaders has been looking the other way. It is out of touch and faces its heaviest electoral defeat in my lifetime.

National and ACT are doing well not because voters want them but because voters are voting against Labour.

The same thing happened in the 1990 election. After six years of brutal Labour policies under David Lange and Roger Douglas the electorate had had a gutsful. They wanted to stop featherbedding the rich at the expense of the rest of us.

National policies even worse
Labour was thrown out and National came in with policies that were even worse than those proposed by Labour.

The same thing will happen this election.

There is a pervasive belief among self-interested politicians that when they are interviewed for opinion polls people will say they are prepared to pay higher taxes but when they get into the ballot box they vote against tax increases.

But this argument can only apply when the individual voter faces paying more tax. In these recent polls the call is for the undertaxed rich to pay a much fairer share. These tax changes the electorate wants will not impact on the 99 percent of voters who go to the polls.

Even National and Act voters want these taxes — but the Labour leadership remain lost in the neoliberal wilderness. They haven’t got the message.

Labour’s failure means we will have to face three years of awful National/Act policies which will deepen the problems we face.

I haven’t kept count but I have personally heard from dozens of Labour members and voters who have told me they have left the party this year and won’t be voting Labour this year — disgust is the dominant theme.

Only hope is reshaped party
After this election Labour’s only hope is to reshape the party around the changed public attitudes to tax and find its roots once more. That is easier said than done for many reasons.

Labour’s activist base is irredeemably middle class and it only has tenuous links with organised workers (less than 10 percent of private sector workers are in unions) who are a small part of the voting public.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has shown no sign he is capable of leading the rejuvenation policy, thrust and direction the party needs. He is still in the politics of the late 20th century.

All the indications are that the job of Labour renaissance is beyond him.

Hopefully there will be enough good people left in Labour to do what’s needed.

Republished with permission from The Daily Blog.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Who would profit most from Labour’s GST-exemption policy? It won’t be those struggling with the cost of living – the average shopper is unlikely to see any real change in supermarket prices if Chris Hipkins was to implement his tax-off fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables.

The real winner would be the supermarket company duopoly who will pocket most of the GST exemption, along with supermarket lobbyists, the lawyers, accountants and public servants who would be in demand to administer and fight over the tax rules. Even if there is a trickle-down in reduced fruit and vege prices, economists say most of this will be disproportionately enjoyed by wealthier shoppers.

What’s more, Hipkins has reiterated there would be no new capital gains or wealth taxes, and he’s announced that income tax rates also won’t be changed by Labour.

This all comes in the context of heightened concern and awareness about the massive inequalities and dysfunction in the tax system and economy. Hence although Labour thinks it has just announced a big and popular election policy that will help those struggling, for many it will serve to reinforce that Labour has spent six years in power doing little but helping the wealthy and Wellington professional managerial class look themselves.

Why GST off fresh food will help the rich more than the poor

Labour is budgeting $500m per year on this tax cut. But how much of that will end up in consumer pockets? And how much will end up with poorer citizens?

The consensus amongst economists seems to be that when such tax exemptions are introduced, companies avoid passing the bulk of the savings onto consumers. Labour’s own 2018 Tax Working Group concluded that only about 30 per cent of tax cut normally gets passed on. The rest goes into increased profits.

There are plenty of overseas examples of this. Today, economist Brad Olsen told Newshub: “We’ve seen when the UK, for example, removed their version of GST off eBooks, you go forward a few years, eBooks are more expensive than they were before, there was no actual reduction in that tax… We saw as well the likes of period products in the UK when they had their GST rating changed, again, only about 20 percent of the change was actually passed on to consumers.”

The Herald has calculated that the average household would save just $2.21 a week, or $115 a year, from Labour’s tax cut.

Labour’s answer to this is the establishment of a “Grocery Commissioner” who can essentially patrol the aisles checking that the GST discount is really being passed on to consumers. But such a promise has done little to impress commentators who can’t see it being effective, but instead just more bureaucracy.

Economists also say that where GST savings are passed onto consumers, this benefits the rich, who spend more on fresh fruit and vegetables. Again, Olsen explained this today: “We know removing GST removes it for everyone, millionaires, people who obviously don’t need that support and because those households actually spend a lot more dollar for dollar on the likes of fruit and vegetables, those upper-income households actually get a lot more from this policy on a dollar basis”.

For this reason, Labour’s tax cut is being criticised by poverty and public health experts. Economist Susan St John of Child Poverty Action Group says the tax cut is “rather meaningless” because it gives the least benefit to those who need it the most. Likewise, Dr Sally Mackay, a food expert at Health Coalition Aotearoa is reported as believing “the policy was not evidence-based, gave a negligible level of saving and was unlikely to alter spending choices.”

Economists say if Labour really wanted to make a difference to those who are struggling, they could much more effectively and efficiently just give the $500m to the poor.

There’s nothing progressive about making the tax system more complex

Labour has promised to establish a working group which will adjudicate on what fruit and vegetable products should be exempt from tax. There will be plenty of debates, and possibly legal battles, over what should qualify under Labour’s rules.

And, of course, there will be greater debate about what the rules should be. At the moment, Labour has decided not to include other foods. Bread and butter, for example, are excluded from the tax cut, despite their symbolism for Labour’s “bread and butter” approach under Hipkins. Likewise, milk and meat are left out. Apparently, the reasoning for keeping the grocery tax cut to unprocessed fruit and vegetables is simply a matter of cost for Labour.

But in the future, some commentators foresee that Labour’s policy would set a precedent for further necessities to have GST removed – what about electricity, canned food, medicines, local government rates, and period products? The list goes on.

Enabling more super-supermarket profits

There is no doubt that Labour’s grocery tax cut could be electorally very popular. After all, households are hurting badly with cost-of-living expenses – over just the last three years fresh fruit and vegetables have gone up 23 per cent.

There was hope the Labour Government would help turn this around with bold reform of the supermarket sector, where consumer costs have been incredibly high due to just two companies – Foodstuffs and Woolworths – controlling the market. This largely unregulated duopoly has been allowed to continue despite Labour’s working groups, and thousands of words and promises to fix the uncompetitive market.

It’s in this context that Labour’s tax cut on fruit and veges is being made. And with the track record of these supermarkets and their price gouging, who would trust that giving supermarkets the power to decide whether to pass on the discounts is a good idea? If Labour had properly reformed this sector and made it competitive, then a drop of GST would have made more sense, as the chances of it being passed on would be greater. But Labour has failed to act on this.

It’s not just the supermarket retailers that are likely to pocket Labour’s tax cut. There will also be nothing to stop suppliers from increasing their costs. Again, without the Government implementing any great reform in this area, few consumers or economists can have faith that the food supply system is fit for purpose and able to pass the full cost of a tax cut onto consumers.

Working for Families tinkering

Labour also released another “cost of living” policy yesterday – to make Working for Families more generous via increasing the weekly in-work tax credit by $25 and the abatement threshold to $50,000, to take into account inflation and wage growth.

Again, critics have been rather underwhelmed by this announcement. Child Poverty Action Group said that such changes would do “nothing to help 200,000 of the country’s most impoverished children” because it won’t go to beneficiary families.

Others criticised Labour for holding back the abatement change until 2026. According to the Herald, Susan St John argues “the increase to the abatement threshold was insufficient now and was likely to be even more inadequate when the policy would be introduced in 2026 if wages increased further.”

The Electoral cynicism of this tax cut might rebound on Labour

Maybe none of the criticisms from experts really matter. Labour is trumpeting that the policy has cut through with voters. The party employed the polling and lobbying company Talbot Mills to get out information on the appeal of the policy before it was launched yesterday. Talbot Mills released their research to media, showing the policy had the support of two-thirds of the public. What’s more, the policy was shown to be especially effective in its appeal to swing voters, and even National supporters.

In contrast, the commentary on the new policy has been almost entirely negative, with many political journalists suggesting that the policy reflects poorly on the health and integrity of the Labour Government. Such verdicts could prove to be incredibly damaging to the party as it goes into the two-month campaign for re-election. When you lose the respect of virtually all opinion leaders – and potentially many party activists – a party risks a narrative forming that it’s time for a change of government. The smell of desperation isn’t attractive.

For example, the political editor of Stuff, Luke Malpass, is scathing today about Labour’s “craven desperation”, saying the tax cut “will be a contender for being the stupidest and most principle-free decision of a major party of this election campaign.”

And the political editor of Newshub, Jenna Lynch, sums up GST policy as Hipkins choosing “choosing tinkering over transformation”.

Today’s Otago Daily Times editorial is equally tough, saying that “Labour, disappointingly, is pumping for pure populism over sensible policy.” The newspaper’s editorial is titled “Desperate and disappointing Labour”, and accuses Labour and Hipkins of having “stooped to a disappointing low” in the “worst traditions of former prime minister Robert Muldoon”. They ask: “In the end, what does any party stand for if it is driven by polls and focus groups?”

Similarly today, Newsroom political journalist Marc Daalder says: “One has to wonder whether the Labour Party has replaced all of its policy staff with the reckons of a ChatGPT bot that has been fed a steady diet of Talbot Mills polling numbers and focus group transcripts.” Daalder suggests that Hipkins is now something of a hollow man, who will support any policy that helps him retain office, but that this makes him look “like any other cynical career politician.”

The GST announcement by itself wouldn’t be so damaging if it came after other transformative progress by Labour over the last six years. In particular, the fact that they are ruling out any other progressive tax reform, gives the GST policy a pathetic look. For those who wanted bigger and bolder changes, yesterday’s announcement will be demoralising and disappointing. And because it looks like a “subsidy for supermarkets”, it risks reminding many that Labour hasn’t carried out the thorough reform of this broken sector that was expected.

Herald business journalist Jenée Tibshraeny tweeted yesterday that the supermarket tax move is yet another example of New Zealand having to rely on broken markets to deliver the Government’s objectives: “Our heavy reliance on banks to stimulate, and now cool the economy via interest rate changes, is contributing towards their large profits. Now Labour wants to rely on supermarkets, which operate in an even more concentrated market, to deliver cost of living support”.

That sums up the situation – we still have very broken markets. And Labour is adding to this problem rather than fixing them. So yes, Labour’s GST policy might be electorally clever, but it’s also somewhat pathetic. Hence, what Labour might hope will save them, is more likely to help finish them off in government.

The Sixth Labour Government looks like it will end, not with a bang but with a failed Phil Goff policy from 2011. Unfortunately for Labour, the GST “supermarket subsidy” has the timidity to disappoint the left and is flawed enough to win the disdain of voters in the Centre.

Yesterday the IRD released its landmark report on the ultra-rich in New Zealand and the tax they pay. It starkly illustrates the extent to which the wealth of the ultra-rich has skyrocketed in recent years. The richest 311 families have a combined wealth of $85 billion, and own a quarter of the country’s assets.

Their income in the last year of the study, 2020-21, was $14.6 billion. But the rate of tax they paid on this income was, according to IRD, only half of what the average taxpayer pays. According to business journalist Bernard Hickey, if those ultra-rich families paid the same rate of tax as middle-income New Zealanders, the government would’ve raised an extra $3.4 billion in tax in that one year.

How our tax system became so unfair

The IRD report raises the age-old question of how we divide up our society’s resources, and who should pay for the costs of running the country.

New Zealand’s economy is set up in a way that enables the creation of great wealth, but not in a way that sees it evenly distributed. Those who own businesses and other major assets and resources become wealthy through the profits, capital gains and high salaries they extract from the economy, while ordinary people who work for a living get what is left over – which often isn’t very much.

Because of this vast economic inequality, in theory taxation systems are set up in a way that takes this into account. The concept of progressive taxation means citizens with the most ability to pay tax are expected to pay a greater proportion than those with less capacity.

Yesterday’s report shows that New Zealand’s tax system isn’t so progressive – in fact, it’s particularly regressive. And it turns out that it’s designed this way. Reforming Rogernomics politicians of the 1980s established a tax system in which poor and middle-income earners pay too much, and the wealthy pay relatively little. They introduced a regressive GST and significantly reduced progressive income and company taxes. Various reforms over the years by National and Labour governments have only embedded and accentuated this unfairness.

The Need for a debate about wealth and taxation

The IRD report’s findings are a huge wakeup call about the politics of tax and wealth. It shows, as Revenue Minister David Parker says, that New Zealand’s tax system is fundamentally unfair.

New Zealanders care very much about fairness – it’s a central part of our political culture. And so, the IRD’s exposure of this unfairness should kickstart a big debate on reforming NZ’s tax system. In particular, we need a proper debate on wealth, land, and capital gains taxes.

However, New Zealand has historically been very poor at debating taxation. Partly this is because the issue of taxation can appear to be very dry – all accounting and maths. Yet it’s a vitally important issue – the dynamics and levels of taxation determines so much about how a country works. Taxation determines levels of resourcing for fundamental services like our healthcare system, roads, and whether we can afford to pay for superannuation.

Debates on taxation are also let down by the politicians and political parties. Part of the problem is that the politicians simply don’t prioritise taxation issues. Not only are there much more exciting issues to debate and campaign on, more crucially, our politicians lack the courage required to provide leadership on taxation reform.

This is especially the case for politicians and parties of the left. They’re very afraid of being bold on taxation, which would require persuading the public of the benefits of reform. Contemporary Labour and Green politicians generally do their best to stay out of debates on capital gains taxes or wealth taxes, or even progressive taxation in general.

The best example of this was the 2018-19 capital gains tax debate sparked by the Labour Government’s consideration of implementing a new scheme. The debate back then was remarkably superficial, partly because the Labour Government deliberately stayed out of it. And then, of course, Jacinda Ardern simply announced that a CGT was off the agenda while she was Prime Minister. This was one of Ardern’s biggest failings as a leader – she claimed to believe strongly in a CGT, but wasn’t willing to make the case for it and convince the public.

Ardern epitomised the political left’s orientation to taxation reform. Whereas in the past, parties of the left would run major campaigns to convince the public and create a consensus in favour of reform, now when it comes to taxation, the contemporary left capitulate, and instead rely on focus groups and polls to tell them what they should do.

Vested interests and the wealthy dominate the debate on taxation

When politicians are unwilling to lead the debate on taxation and wealth they hand over the debate to vested interests who dominate the public discourse. In what is effectively a tax debate void, the wealthy and those who represent them can win the debate by default, blocking any reform of taxation.

This month we saw lobbyists and vested interests blatantly enter the debate, seeking to stymie any demands for a change to the status quo. The most obvious example was a report that tax consultants OliverShaw commissioned from Sapere Research Group, which claimed to show that the wealthy pay their fair share of tax.

This was designed to pre-empt yesterday’s IRD report release. And OliverShaw’s directors, Robin Oliver and Mike Shaw went public with their concerns about what they thought would show up in the IRD research, as it could produce a “misleading and confusing picture of our tax system”.

Similarly, the Herald’s Jenée Tibshraeny reported that Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand (CAANZ) tax lead John Cuthbertson was also worried that the IRD report would be “beat up” to encourage people to think the rich aren’t paying enough tax. He expressed his concern that this might pressure the politicians into a “knee-jerk reaction” of taxing the rich.

Other lobbying to prevent taxation is now underway. Today, Baker Tilly Staples Rodway tax director Andrew Dickeson told NBR that the IRD’s report is “a self-serving study for the Labour Government. It’s really giving the Government ammunition to start a conversation around, they would say, improving fairness.”

Economist Shamubeel Eaqub wrote yesterday that the onslaught from vested interests will help ensure that the latest tax reports don’t have any impact on changing tax policy: “The very wealthy will inevitably mount a strong and co-ordinated opposition, using a wide array of organisations and people. They can afford to do it, and it would be a small cost relative to taxes they may have to pay.”

And we can see this happening. Groups and politicians representing the interests of the wealthy are mobilising and casting doubt on the IRD’s research and what it could lead to in terms of taxing high incomes and wealth.

A Failure of political leadership

In contrast, it looks like Prime Minister Chris Hipkins will say virtually nothing meaningful about the stark unfairness uncovered in the report. His cautiousness and conservatism, mean that he’s unlikely to reverse Ardern’s prohibition on even discussing wealth taxes.

By conceding the taxation debate to vested interests, this will ensure that New Zealand continues to have a largely regressive taxation system – one in which the poor subsidise the rich, much like the days of the Sheriff of Nottingham. Sadly, we don’t appear to have any Robin Hoods to intervene in what is essentially a class war.

We should be thankful for the IRD and David Parker for making this latest research happen. But we now need a proper debate about wealth and taxation. And it’s time for the politicians to be bolder on what they really think is needed. If that’s a wealth tax, a land tax, or a capital gains tax, then let’s hear the arguments in favour. We can’t afford to continue with the status quo.

Getty Images

If nothing else, the just released Inland Revenue study of the tax rates paid by the wealthiest New Zealanders should put to rest the notion we have a progressive tax system. We don’t.

A progressive system is one where higher earners pay more as their income grows.
The report, commissioned by Minister of Revenue and Attorney-General David Parker, has revealed the country’s wealthiest are paying a median effective tax rate of 9.5% (including GST).

This is less than half the tax paid by middle income earners at 22%, or nearly 30% if you include GST. But while many commentators have asked how such a low tax rate is possible, the real question should be what happens next?

Will the government change the tax code to include a robust capital gains tax? In a hotly contested election year, is there much political will to target the core source of income for New Zealand’s richest people?

Whatever the answers, we should first recognise just how important this report is. The now decommissioned Tax Working Group, of which I was a member, called for this study to be completed. It is satisfying to see the country now has better information on which to base its tax decisions.

New Zealand’s one percent

Inland Revenue surveyed the incomes of 311 households since 2021 for its study. The average net wealth of each household was NZ$276 million and collectively this group owns around $85 billion worth of assets.

Another way to describe this is that the richest 1% owns about a quarter of the country’s financial assets.

According to Inland Revenue, those surveyed are meeting all their income tax obligations. There was no evidence of any wrongdoing.

Read more:
New Zealand’s tax system is under the spotlight (again). What needs to change to make it fair?

But only 7% of their overall economic income is taxed in their personal name. The other 93% comes from investment returns, most of which would be untaxed. These households also use entities, trusts and companies, which are taxed at a lower rate than individuals.

Based on the fact that 93% of the increase in their wealth is from an untaxable source, it’s no wonder they pay tax at such a low rate. In fact it’s surprising they are paying as much tax as they are.

Big change unlikely

Thanks to the information contained in Inland Revenue’s study, our unease over
how we tax people (and whether the system is truly progressive) is more than just a feeling. The report provides hard, factual information illustrating the consequences of current tax policy.

Ahead of the report’s release, however, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins refused to be drawn on Labour’s tax policy and whether there would be any changes. Revenue Minister Parker only hinted at possible tweaks.

With a budget and an election on the horizon, it’s unlikely this government will be making significant changes to the tax code. In the current political environment, it’s very difficult to persuade a majority that new taxes are a good idea.

But it’s quite possible there may be a tax reduction for lower and middle income earners, combined with additional taxation on capital in some way.

Read more:
Why a proposed capital gains tax could mean tax cuts for most New Zealanders

Who pays the bills?

Despite it being an obvious target, however, we shouldn’t expect a robust capital gains tax. The previous Labour government ruled this out and it’s unlikely to gain traction now.

With just six months until the general election, too, there isn’t time for the requisite legislation to be written and consulted on.

Most New Zealanders don’t really need to think about tax at all – more than half don’t even file tax returns. But even this group should benefit from being aware of the Inland Revenue findings and be better informed during the subsequent debates on tax policy.

Because behind all these questions about who pays what tax rate lie significant considerations. New Zealand’s infrastructure spending is increasing and many social services need greater investment. How we pay for it will determine whether we keep up or fall behind.

How much money the government earns from taxation, who pays and how much they pay is a political conversation we can’t put off forever.

Craig Elliffe was an independent reviewer of the IRD high-wealth individuals research project report.

– ref. Proving the wealthiest New Zealanders pay low tax rates is a good start – now comes the hard part – https://theconversation.com/proving-the-wealthiest-new-zealanders-pay-low-tax-rates-is-a-good-start-now-comes-the-hard-part-204532

The Opportunities Party (TOP) is putting other political parties to shame with its bold and innovative policies. Yesterday TOP announced their latest tax, housing, and income policies, and they were the sort of bold and transformative innovations that supporters of parties like Labour and the Greens have been desperately wanting to see from their own parties.

TOP’s new leader, Raf Manji, held a press conference in Wellington to announce radical policies that the party will take to next year’s election in a third bid to make it into Parliament. He also announced another possible route into Parliament, with his intention to stand in the Christchurch seat of Ilam, where he came second in 2017.

Land and income tax policies

The game changer policy that could reset debates on capital gains tax and income tax is the proposal to levy an annual tax of 0.75 per cent of the value of residential land properties. The party pitches this as a superior alternative to a capital gains tax, and says it would raise $6.75b-$7.5b annually.

The tax would be fairly straightforward, and difficult to avoid. For example, a residential property with a land value of $1m would pay an annual levy of $7,500. There would be only limited exemptions – for rural, conservation and Māori land, and people over 65 years could defer their payments. The tax wouldn’t apply to the buildings on the land.

TOP says that the current “Brightline tax” on property would be axed. In addition, property owners would once again be able to deduct interest costs from their tax bills for rentals and new house builds.

TOP would also make a huge change to income tax by creating a $15,000 tax-free threshold, which means all income up to that point would be untaxed. According to Treasury research, this would cost about $5.2b. Hence TOP is selling this as a “Tax switch” – shifting the burden of taxation from income, and especially the poor, to those who own properties. Overall, TOP says the policies would be “fiscally neutral”.

The current income tax thresholds would also be adjusted. And Labour’s 39 per cent tax for top incomes would be maintained.

The overall philosophy of these tax changes, according to Manji is to “rebalance the economy” and correct unhealthy trends, particularly in terms of the housing market and inequality.

Income support policies

Poverty campaigners will be enthusiastic about TOP’s policy of extending the current “In Work tax credit” of Working for Families to those on benefits – costing about $900m. This will have a big impact on inequality, and is a policy that Labour has studiously avoided in recent years.

Perhaps more controversially, TOP is advocating for a one-off cancellation of all beneficiary debts with the Ministry of Social Development – amounting to about $2b.

In terms of inequality, Manji says: “People are caught in a vortex of unaffordable living and are unable to progress with this huge burden of debt around their necks. Meanwhile, the Government has overseen a huge upwards transfer of wealth due to their Covid-19 policies.”

Housing policies

Much of TOP’s focus is on the housing crisis – with the land tax being their prime weapon against imbalances in the market. They have also proposed spending much more on social housing for the poor, identifying that thousands of additional houses need to be built on top of what the Labour Government has planned.

To do this they are advocating a $3bn package of spending for community housing associations, to build 6-10,000 new homes. By bypassing the Government’s Kāinga Ora state housing agency, this might appeal to some on the political right that want to see more social housing but less government bureaucracy.

They also propose that all GST collected by central government from the building of new houses should be reallocated to local authorities to help pay for and incentivise the building of necessary infrastructure.

TOP’s route to power: Ilam

TOP’s policies appeal to the Zeitgeist – the need to shake up the status quo in politics, especially the lack of effective policies to deal with the big problems of housing and inequality.

And at the moment there seems to be large segment of the population who voted for Labour or the Greens in 2020 and have become disillusioned with the current government, but not convinced that a National-Act administration would be any better. There are also former voters from New Zealand First looking for an anti-Establishment option.

And so far, the current policies are getting some interesting endorsements from individuals across the political spectrum – for example, leftwing blogger Martyn Bradbury and rightwing blogger David Farrar have both expressed support for the announcements. In terms of the latter, Farrar says such a tax switch – from taxing incomes to land property instead – will make the tax system more efficient and fair: “TOP’s policy will see people rewarded more for working more, and discourage people from land banking. I support it.”

Maybe we are therefore seeing the start of a minor party rising to fulfill the need that the old parties aren’t delivering. And by positioning itself as a pivot party, TOP could hold the balance of power in 2023 and decide the next government. However, it’s worth pointing out that breaking into Parliament is astonishingly difficult, and TOP is a good example of how hard it is for new political parties.

The party was established in 2016 by wealthy economist Gareth Morgan, and despite his millions of dollars of funding the party only received 2.4 per cent of the party vote at that election. In 2020, under new management, and leader Geoff Simmons, the party managed 1.5 per cent.

The party is currently fluctuating between about 1 per cent and 3 per cent in the polls. To hit the 5 per cent MMP threshold they need to win about 140,000 votes. Getting to that has so far proved impossible for all new political parties under MMP unless they already have MPs and have split from an established party.

Manji has announced that TOP might be able to avoid the dreaded need to get to 5 per cent by winning Ilam, where he once got 23 per cent of the vote as an Independent, coming second to National. He has a strong name recognition and support base in the area, having been a Christchurch City councillor for six years.

If Manji was able to look competitive in the Ilam race, more voters might consider giving their party vote to TOP, with the idea that this vote would be less likely to be wasted. This motivation can give minor parties a real boost.

TOP’s basic electoral problems still exist

The biggest problem for TOP – one that has existed right from its origins – is a lack of clarity about why the party exists and who it exists for. It has never been able to convincingly pitch to voters a simple narrative of what it stands for or is trying to fix. Too often its ideological and voter base has been contradictory and self-defeating. This is often the plight of centre parties – they might have lots of good policies and ideas and quality candidates, but without any organic and genuine political identity and reason to exist they fail to take off.

For example, Manji’s decision to stand in the Ilam electorate is smart – he already has a strong track record there, Gerry Brownlee is not going to contest the seat, and the Labour Party incumbent, Sarah Pallett, is unlikely to hold the seat with the tide going out on the Government’s support.

But this is a true-blue seat of middle class home owners. Will they really be receptive to Manji’s new flagship policy of taxing their properties? Surely, it’s going to be extremely unpopular with many of the voters that ticked the Manji box in 2017 when he was an independent.

Will Fendalton voters really be attracted by policies to give a tax cut that disproportionately benefits those at the bottom? Will they agree with wiping the debts of beneficiaries?

So, TOP continues to be a party of middle class policy wonks with policies that perhaps should be highly attractive to those on the left of politics or the working class or dispossessed. But the party is unlikely to appeal to those on the political right or left, nor to constituencies of the rich or poor.

The party can push the idea that it is a “blue-green” party. But it’s not clear what that means anymore. Manji himself says he voted Green at the last election, and at times has been very supportive of John Key. So perhaps he does personify that ideological mashup very well.

But as the party’s fourth leader he is going to have to do much better than the first three leaders to get across that the party stands for more than just “evidence-based policy”. It needs a much stronger identity than just having bold policies.

However, bold policies are a good start. We desperately need policy innovators and disrupters in New Zealand politics. If nothing else they will hopefully give other parties a jolt, perhaps reigniting debates about progressive tax policies and ways to fix the housing crisis. As TOP correctly said yesterday, the “Status quo must go”.

Further reading on TOP’s policy launch

Thomas Coughlan (Herald): TOP eyes Parliament with $6.35 billion tax cut, property tax
Luke Malpass (Stuff): The Opportunities Party releases $6.5b tax cut plan to get back on political map
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Boom – TOP release incredible policy
No Right Turn: Shifting the window
David Farrar: A good tax policy from TOP

Other items of interest and importance today

GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENT
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Labour is harnessing the wrong kind of anger if it wants to win
Tracy Watkins (Stuff): While we worry about the world around us, politicians trot out the same old rhetoric
Ian Taylor (Herald): Sorry Willie Jackson, we’re not ‘useless Māori’ because we don’t speak te reo
Willie Jackson (Herald): I would never judge anyone who did not speak te reo (paywalled)
RNZ: Jacinda Ardern models at World of Wearable Arts award show
Stuff: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern makes surprise appearance at World of WearableArt
Herald: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern makes surprising appearance as model at World of WearableArt (paywalled)
Mike Houlahan (ODT): Labour likely to make women a key issue
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Government yet to decide what to do with axed Auckland cycle bridge funds one year on (paywalled)
Nevil Gibson (NBR): Memo to government: Get your ducks in a row
Claire Trevett (Herald): A skeleton in Chris Penk’s closet, another Speaker’s junket and where is Christopher Luxon? (paywalled)
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): 1 Year until 2023 NZ election – MMP spectrum splintering
Steve Braunias (Herald): The secret diary of Costco (paywalled)
Victor Billot (Newsroom): An Ode for Nanaia Mahuta
Phil Smith (RNZ): Testing Times: Parliament’s new speakers get a hazing

LOCAL GOVERNMENT, THREE WATERS, AND ELECTIONS
Lloyd Burr (Today FM): ‘I’m at the stage where I don’t know if I’ll even vote this year’
Cherie Sivignon and Skara Bohny (Stuff): Civics education floated to combat voter disengagement, distrust
Alison Mau (Stuff): From big policy to potholes; no matter the race, the abuse continues
Samantha Motion (Herald): It’s time to address the orange envelope in the room (paywalled)
Waatea News: Rangatahi are saying voting should be online
Craig Ashworth (Local Democracy Reporting): Local councils criticised as pale, male and stale at hui
Erin Gourley (Stuff): Difficult to separate the capital’s three mayoral frontrunners
Erin Gourley (Stuff): Candidate meetings take a ‘sinister turn’ with anti-Three Waters hecklers
Matthew Scott (Newsroom): Middle-aged white men over-represented in election candidates
Blair Jackson (Stuff): Voting pack delays risk undermining voting process, mayoral candidate says
Brian Easton (Pundit): Three Waters: Yet again a centralist solution is being Imposed upon local communities
Thomas Cranmer: Three Waters and the Water Services Entities

AUCKLAND LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTION
Todd Niall (Stuff): Auckland mayoralty: Brown’s off-camera jibe deemed ‘undignified’ by rival
Molly Swift (Newshub): Local elections: Auckland mayoral candidates Efeso Collins and Wayne Brown show different leadership styles in head-to-head
Cherie Howie (Herald): Auckland mayoral race: Candidate Wayne Brown attacks NZ Herald journalist Simon Wilson
Newshub: Auckland Mayoral candidate Wayne Brown caught on camera saying he wants to glue pictures of journalist on urinals so people can ‘pee on him’
Steve Braunias (Herald): Auckland mayoralty: Steve Braunias’ Lincoln Rd poll puts Wayne Brown ahead (paywalled)

ECONOMY, EMPLOYMENT AND INEQUALITY
Chris Trotter (Interest): Second time around
Janine Starks (Stuff): Is the Government income insurance scheme a good idea?
Jane Patterson (RNZ): Labour, National cross swords over tax, social insurance
Phil Pennington (RNZ): OIA shows Amazon and Prime Minister were in direct talks
Steven Joyce (Herald): Grand gestures fall flat as reality bites (paywalled)
Michelle Duff (Stuff): The pēpī penalty: How women take a $116m hit every year from lack of access to childcare
Liam Dann (Herald): Brace yourself for an action-packed inflation reveal this month (paywalled)
Rayssa Almeida (RNZ): Making the four-day week work: ‘You’ve got to move to the future’
Grant Bradley (Herald): What’s behind Kiwi billionaire Richard Chandler’s big new move (paywalled)
Jenée Tibshraeny (Herald): NZ voters more likely than financial markets to protest govt tax and spend plans (paywalled)

HOUSING
Kelly Makiha (Stuff): High-needs homeless moved from controversial Fenton St hotel in Rotorua
Liz Gordon (Insight Aotearoa): High density housing for the poor – a mistake we may bitterly regret
Geraden Cann (Stuff): 10% of ghost home owners intentionally keeping them empty
Herald Editorial: Housing intensification will throw shade on new councils (paywalled)
Herald: Housing market slump has cost homeowners in Auckland more than $140,000
Max Rashbrooke (Guardian): Hope and heartbreak for New Zealanders dreaming of a communal life

MEDIA
Janet Wilson (Stuff): Willie Jackson needs to explain why this merger is a good idea
Richard Harman: Broadcasting merger at risk of future Government direction (paywalled)
Herald Editorial: Extraordinary claim of mistrust from Broadcasting Minister (paywalled)
Colin Peacock (RNZ): More rancour on the road to a new public media entity
Stuff: Kiwis’ ‘earnest’ pandemic approach was alienating: Andrea Vance

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT
Moana Ellis (Local Democracy Reporting): ‘Stealing’ – Iwi leader slams plan to bottle and sell bore water
Eric Crampton (Stuff): What is going on with our climate regulators?
Adrian Macey and Dave Frame (BusinessDesk): Better ways to do climate policy (paywalled)

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Thomas Manch (Stuff): Pacific leaders sign US declaration, New Zealand supports US recognition of Cook Islands and Niue
1News: NZ could be ‘overpowered’ by US-Pacific partnership – expert
Michael Neilson (Herald): United States unveils historic Pacific strategy to counter China ‘pressure and coercion’ and climate change

JUSTICE
Mike White (Stuff): Law Commission will examine ‘jailhouse snitches’
Hayden Donnell (RNZ): Hard stats and new voices enter the ‘youth crime spike’ coverage
Phil Pennington (RNZ): Privacy Commissioner requests police clarity over use of surveillance cameras
Phil Pennington (RNZ): Privacy Commissioner to monitor police over deleting unlawful photos

EDITOR’S NOTE: Taxation is the mechanism for redistribution of wealth to combat inequality and for redirecting resources to build a society. But our current tax principles though largely hidden or not understood by ordinary people, lie at the root of all our current inequality and struggling economy. Struggling at least for ordinary people. This article shows our current tax principles are central to our economic problems. Understand and fix tax and we are on a path to greater economic security and wealth for all, a ‘citizens economy’.

Special Analysis by Stephen Minto.

In my article ‘Housing – We can’t build our way out of this housing affordability crisis.’ on 23 August 2021 I looked at the economic structure driving housing affordability and how to solve it.  I identified ‘the normal principles of taxation’ as a major factor driving excessive investor demand.

Those normal principles are helping create three of the main problems we are facing in our society:

• tax avoidance,
• inequality, generating poverty (including the housing affordability crisis),
• environmental damage, and the resulting multiple related crisis’s. (e.g climate).

These three problems show the current ‘normal principles of taxation’ are sending the wrong economic signals to the economy and distorting it away from its primary purpose, the supply of goods and services to meet our society’s wants and needs. But there is a simple reset of the principles that removes the structural drivers currently creating these problems. And a reset is essential to fix these problems as new taxes or laws will just be lipstick on a pig if we don’t fix the underlying structural drivers.

This relatively easy reset does not require any international agreement or loss of autonomy for New Zealand.

NOTE: For your convenience, we have structured this long-form report into five sections. Part A continues below. But you can download the full analysis via this PDF, without cost, which contains Part A, Part B, C, D, and E.

To summarise the five parts:

• In Part A we look at six ways the existing normal principles of taxation are damaging the long term economy and subsequently our society. They show the basic principles of economics are being undermined by the normal principles of taxation. I then identify the two main actions of a reset that will fix this damage.
• Part B in this series details the full range of required tax reset ideas (e.g. get rid of damaging GST) and goes through the impacts from the full reset and how many of those challenges actually put the economy on a more sustainable and stronger growth base, with more competition.
• Part C in this series covers aspects of the Pandora Papers and how it is the ownership structures of companies and trusts that are creating moral and economic problems just like the normal principles of taxation do. I raise some basic questions about how we should/could change the powers of, or scope, in which these entities are formed and operated. It is only in the structural permission about how they work that we can stop the economic problems we currently have.
• Part D in this series examines beneficial impacts and reasons why the capital revenue distinction must go. Including how it will operate and impact business.
• Part E in this series details impacts on various sectors of the New Zealand economy.

What are ‘the normal principles of taxation’?

At a very high level, income is identified by having three features:

• It comes in
• It is periodic (not one-offs)
• It has the character of income in the hand of the person who receives it.

From these base features principles arose. They have been adapted and interpreted through case law of a capital/revenue distinction. That can be defined as:

• Capital is not taxed but revenue is, so some businesses try to label items as capital to reduce their tax bill. A lot of the Pandora Papers covers this type of ‘legal’ activity.
• A sale of a farm, as a one off, is generally capital and not subject to tax. You would expect that to be reinvested somewhere rather than used to live off. But the sale of produce from the farm (periodic – used to live off) is taxable.
• Expenditure incurred to gain that ‘income’ should be deducted before tax is paid. Money spent to gain income is not really income that can be taxed.
• So you get gross income and net income.
• Expenditure incurred can’t be questioned.
• Costs to run a business can’t be questioned for taxation because it is up to the owners how to run the business regardless of the consequences or how sensible they are.

These are enough principles for my purposes; but inherent and inseparable in these principles are some values:

• tax is a cost, and
• it is legitimate and necessary for efficiency to minimise that cost. Like you would with any other cost.

But there is the catch in this, tax is not a normal cost.

Why are these ‘normal principles of taxation’ a problem?

Here are six points that explain why the principles send the wrong economic signals to the whole economy and undermine economic growth.

1. They undermine comparative advantage and encourage monopoly

(Small businesses with lower costs should have an advantage in price over big firms. But larger firms use costs to reduce their tax to give them an advantage.)

• Business is supposed to be efficient and reduce costs, to be competitive. The theory goes, by driving down costs you drive down price which is better for satisfying consumers wants and needs. This is more efficient and only business can do this as government is wasteful and costly.

• But this same efficiency driver on a micro business level sees tax as a cost that a business gets nothing for on a balance sheet.  So to avoid tax, a dead cost, the ‘normal principles of taxation’ allow them to grow other costs to not only prevent having to pay tax, but also to do things that drive up the price of their goods and services so they gain more profit.

• We all know and experience the marketing techniques that large business use to keep their profits high, or how they run anti-competitive practises to undermine competitors. e.g. run an airline along the routes of a competitor so they don’t grow and move into their high cost routes. And these techniques cost a lot. They rely on big data from loyalty cards, slick advertising, changing superficial designs with new releases, glamorous shops, etc. And they rely on access to debit financing. These are just ‘normal’ large business practises based on behavioural/marketing psychology and finance.

• So large businesses don’t mind incurring these costs because they will reduce the ‘dead cost’ taxation they have to pay. And it is a big saving, 28% on every dollar spent. So consumers/taxpayers in having a reduced tax are actually helping large companies pay for techniques to make us pay more money for their goods or services. So we pay twice for their supplied good or service – once on the high/‘discounted’ price and second through the tax subsidy.

• Small businesses simply can’t afford to run the same techniques or access debt finance in the way a large firm can. Their whole pricing structure is done differently; they reduce their costs and run a tight ship. These economic rules simply don’t apply to large business because the normal principles of taxation turn costs into an asset for them – a tool to drive out smaller competitors while driving up price.  Small firms can’t compete against these large firms no matter how good the quality or price they charge for their good or service.

• Another perverse result is large businesses become less concerned about quality and service in part because like any large bureaucracy they have to wear a few problems. But also in part because large businesses not only compete on price and quality, but compete through ‘cost accrual competition’. The ability to accumulate costs that work to their advantage over smaller competitors. And it is profitable and relatively easy and ‘legal’, but it shifts a large business’ focus away from innovation and building quality or low price, and into a focus on gimmicks and primal manipulations to trick us to buy. And it reduces competition as smaller firms can only compete by reducing costs and there is a limit to that.

• We can see this most easily in fast food and retail where there has been a slide into franchise. The Chemist Warehouse is one of the most recent. Costs on the floor are tight but the marketing, site location rental, management fees, executive salaries, advertising, debt financing are all high cost. In a generation the smaller owner run businesses taking pride in their business are largely gone from New Zealand.  So many small businesses struggle and fail because it’s hard to find niches to escape the larger firms relying on costs and turnover to drive their pricing. Cost efficiency is no longer a key economic driver for a large business; ‘cost accrual competition’ through saving tax is the easiest way to wealth.

• In addition larger businesses are more likely to spend on vanity expenses because it still reduces their tax bill so it gives them an advantages over smaller competitors.  e.g. take a lease on property in prestigious locations, purchase on finance or lease luxury cars, still get a 50% deduction for business ‘entertainment’ expenses – meals and lunches, tickets and who knows what else.
• ‘The normal principles of taxation’ remove the natural competitive advantage of a low cost business supplying the same goods and services. These smaller business are normally New Zealand owned and operated.  And to catch that advantage all businesses have to follow that high cost model, and treat tax as a cost to be minimised, leading to larger and larger businesses leading to monopoly capitalism. Cost accrual competition is a powerful economic tool and we the taxpayer are subsiding it to only some people’s advantage.

2. They undermine redistribution of wealth (tax) and the resulting economic stimulus

• Almost all businesses do not create wealth, they simply accumulate wealth.  And to accumulate they rely on the education and health systems to support access to employees and customers. They also rely on infrastructure, courts, police etc in which to do business. Tax minimisation, avoidance and evasion, undercuts the process of redistribution of wealth which pays for the supply of these services and therefore it undercuts the provision of the services the business needs to function with.

• Redistribution by taxation also supports demand across the economy which in turn supports business accumulation of wealth. The ‘tax is a cost to be minimised’ attitude comes from the normal principles of taxation, but tax helps promote the multiplier effect which benefits the entire economy. The principles need to change so that no business has an incentive, and mechanism provided by the principles, to minimise tax, as it works against the long term supply of goods and services, within the economy.

• Tax is like no other cost as it is not fixed. The principles calculate it as a relative cost based on what income is left over after costs. So on a micro economic level a business see’s an advantage to run up costs to minimise payment of tax. But on a macro economic level that minimisation is damaging the economy in which it functions. Tax minimisation is actually an act of self harm by a business in the long term. The normal principles of taxation are creating the problem.

3. They subsidise risk taking and provide no choice for taxpayers on doing that.

• By allowing business to deduct expenses to reduce their income that is liable for tax; it makes the New Zealand taxpayer subsidise the provision of that good or service through sacrificing tax collected. And as said before the saving is not always passed on, prices are held high and profit maximised so consumers are not getting the benefit of the subsidy. The normal principles of taxation allow no choice for society on making this subsidy. e.g. huge amounts of investment resources can be used to subsidise the business of taking rich people on tourism flights to space. Would people vote for that choice, over lifting more children out of poverty? But there is no vote, we have no choice, and it is tax revenue we could have.

• The entrepreneur who has the knowledge to make these choices about what costs to incur should take the risk for those choices. Choices and risks should not be subsidised by taxpayers or government as that is not their role.

• If the people or the elected representatives decide to subsidise an activity that is okay. And that is very different from a blanket subsidy as happens currently under ‘the normal principles of taxation’.

4. They punish innovation or the efficient use of resources

If two businesses supply the same good or service but one does it at a higher cost than the other, why should the lower cost company pay more tax?   This is not good economic policy.

• The Lazy Inefficient company B has more expenses ($100)  so only pays $14 in tax but the efficient/innovative company A ($50 in expenses) pays $14 more tax at $28.

• The normal principles of taxation are sheltering poorly performing companies, and punishing well performing companies. And the taxpayers through having less tax collected are subsidising the inefficient poorly performing company.

• And the principles allow more investment income to be made available to this poorly performing company. i.e. wasting scare investment capital. (If B did not get the tax subsidy and had to also pay $28 in tax like efficient company A, then Lazy inefficient B would only get $8 to reinvest).

• To those who say the high cost of B could be due to the quality service they provide. Yes, and that will mark them out from their competitors, and that quality should sell them.  But there is no way for the blunt instrument of taxation to tell the difference of quality to wasteful spending; so it shouldn’t. If customers don’t want that business’s ‘quality’ then that is a market signal. There is no reason for the taxpayers to subsidise a business’s choices on quality as the entrepreneur might be right or wrong and there is no way to tell, except by the customer.

• More can be said on this example but it does not change the fundamental point that the wrong economic signals are being sent. e.g. Company A could have less customers and be price matching to Company B to maximise their profit rather than passing on the savings from innovation to their customers. Company B becomes a tool to make customers pay more as its existence takes up some demand, which slows the introduction of potential new competitors. This is another reason to have B out. This shows tax is only part of fixing the economy but a very very important part.

5. They subsidise environmental damage or resource waste by creating an externality

• Of course not all companies have high cost structures because they run anti-competitive practise, or have vanity expenses, or they are just seeking tax minimisation. Some businesses, are just very costly to undertake and there is nothing inefficient about that, e.g. mining.

• But should the costs to run those enterprises be subsidised by the taxpayers taking a reduced tax collection? The high costs of those business choices should be borne by the risk taking entrepreneur with the knowledge to take those risks.

• For example, if you do the Hump Ridge track you see some great wooden viaducts used to bring out the timber from a milling operation. The devastation of the local forest was complete but the business as reported never made a profit as its costs were so high and the sales income never fully came in. New Zealand got nothing of substance out of this destructive exploitation. Yes workers got wages and scrimped a life of remote hardship. The directors would have got income along the way. Yes there is now some tourism value but it’s probably not much more than if it was left. Overall, the value of the forest asset was wasted without profit. The ecological and cultural value lost can’t be quantified.

• The same destruction and waste occurred in the areas around the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ in the inner Whanganui. All over New Zealand subsistence businesses were supported by ‘the normal principles of taxation’ for people to eke out an existence to the detriment of traditional Maori life and culture, the environment, and their own lives. The ‘normal principles of taxation’ were one of the systems within colonial exploitation that allowed profits to be stripped back overseas without as much redistributive effect from an effective taxation. The principles were a tool to strip value out of the new nation as the costs of exploitation were offset to the income.  It is a tool in a class system that strips income away from the redistribution/taxation process.

Colonial legacy justification and creation of an externality

• Yes, you can argue that this sort of tax subsidy for business was necessary to enable economic activity in new lands. And that is the colonial argument. From where we stand today we can see the waste and destruction of that legacy and thinking. Our climate and environment is imperilled because of it. But it’s still happening, that structure is still in existence within the normal principles of taxation, and it is helping drive environmental damage and climate change. The rules were made through judge law to favour the wealthy to help drive their, or their class’s, wealth. This reset will at least make the full cost fall on the risk takers and they will at least be more careful in future because the cost will fall on them fully.

Ongoing impact

• If income from a business  activity almost matches the cost of the activity, then very little tax is paid. So when the good is being sold the price does not reflect the cost of society’s human and physical infrastructure that was required to support that activity. Because tax was reduced this cost is not calculated into that sale price. i.e. a seller will work for the highest price but if the cost of production is subsidised, the threshold for the sale price is being subsidised and the true cost is not reflected in the price resulting in false economic signals being sent to producers. The normal principles of taxation are creating an externality of the cost of society.

• A business must fully contribute from its income back to society through paying tax or there is no point in society letting the business be in existence. Like the purchase of the viaducts, or the mill boilers, tax is just a cost that should be factored in and you can’t avoid it.

• Each business or activity needs to be viable in its own right so it has a cost that reflects if it is a high cost activity. Current loss offsetting hides a costly activity and dissuades companies funding research or looking for alternatives to get around high costs. Subsidising by tax undermines that drive for innovation.

• Environmentally damaging activities like mining are one such activity where if the cost of tax was not able to be avoided, a higher price would generate more focus on recycling, or innovation to find alternatives. See more comment under heading ‘Different sectors have different impacts’

• It is no longer appropriate for our business community to be molly coddled and subsidised by socialising their costs onto the New Zealand taxpayer, the government, and the environment.

6. The ‘normal principles of taxation’ are helping cause an international destabilisation problem.

• President Xi in China is crushing democracy in Hong Kong as he see’s it as a vehicle to undermine China. But he is fighting the wrong enemy. As a former colony of Great Britain Hong Kong follows the basic outline of ‘the normal principles of taxation’. And most of the tax principles were set through english case law by judges who arguably have acted in their own or their class’s economic interest when making decisions that set precedent. As a colony these tax principles facilitated economic value being stripped away from the colony and the lands near it to the benefit of the ‘mother country’. In the post colonial world we still see these tax principles being used to strip value out of countries with little tax paid, and then into tax havens for the use of the billionaire owners of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others.

• China has become the factory of the world as large multinational companies moved manufacturing there for cheap resources and low regulation. President Xi wants the work and business to stay so it will give stability and economic strength to China. He was recently reported on CNN  Aug 18, 2021 by Laura He as pushing on China’s rich to redistribute wealth. So he can see problems in his nation but he is asking business people bound by a tax system to act outside that system. His quest for security by taking on democracy and the Uyghur people means he is no longer walking with his people as a leader, using the wisdom of the crowd to guide his nation but is leaning into an inherently unstable autocratic leadership model. And he is adding fuel to the cold war that leaders in the US, UK and Australia, seem willing to hype up in a new alliance. He has chosen the wrong enemy; it is the colonial based tax structure that is undermining China’s security, e.g Transfer Pricing and Thin Capitalisation are able to undermine revenue and the ability to grow domestic based businesses in a way that spreads wealth. That has to be dealt with by simple consistent rules as suggested here that do not favour multinationals, as the current normal principles of taxation do. Democracy needs to be decoupled from exploitive capitalism and a tax reset will help do that.

• And the ‘west’ is also struggling with conflict and polarisation in society, driven through culture war issues like immigration, climate change, vaccines, and abortion rights. In the ‘west’ the culture wars are facilitated through a dysfunctional 4th estate and poor quality democratic processes. These culture wars have some urgency for ordinary people, ‘taking our jobs, taking our opportunities’, but theses are just the scapegoats for the very real economic struggle many are experiencing. It’s about the economy getting polarised. Ultimately the western nations have the same enemy as China in the poor functioning of the tax system. The tax system is helping build monopolies, facilitating tax avoidance, and undermining local businesses. We are all poorer.

• The normal principles of taxation are well overdue for a complete overhaul so they build each nation’s economy and redistribute wealth, and that is the purpose of taxation, not to concentrate wealth and build tax havens.

• Note: The need for international trade by New Zealand will not be impacted by these changes but it may, or may not, modify it. And with the supply chain disruption brought by the Covid-19 Pandemic, it makes it an excellent time to bring in changes that will ameliorate the disruption we are already experiencing. It will help our nations build back on to a more sustainable path.

How shall we reset ‘the normal principles of taxation’?

• In the media and policy world the strongest reset theme for taxation is greater transparency and sharing of information from other jurisdictions (especially tax havens) so tax can be claimed. This is all essential work that needs to be done but transparency and sharing information does not remove the structural problems created by the principles. And the current principles have created a complex set of rules that are an administrative burden.

• And the creation of new taxes like wealth taxes will not deal with the structural drivers of wealth concentration.  As the Pandora papers show the normal principles of taxation are a major driver of wealth concentration and tax avoidance.

• I propose a structural reset that uses existing economic understandings which therefore won’t destabilise the economy, and it works alongside the existing market forces, sending appropriate signals to the economy.

The two main reset actions are:

1. Remove deductibility for all expenses except for domestic salary and wage payments.

2. No capital revenue distinction for non-individuals.

This is supported by:

• A very broad legislative definition of ‘income’ to ensure everything that comes in is taxed regardless of traditional capital revenue distinctions. Even to include related party loans (with an exception for 3rd party loans – perhaps a strict list of who can be a 3rd party). The Pandora papers show this is essential regardless of even this reset. Because the current normal principles of taxation allow a company to make income but then through a series of entities turn it into a loan to be made back to the company or another related party and a ‘loan’ is not taxable. Part C, in this series, gives an example.
• No grouping of companies for tax purposes. Companies are separate legal entities and will be treated that way for tax.
  • The original intention of grouping was to prevent tax avoidance but it has now been twisted to be a major tax minimisation technique. i.e. Company tax rates in the past had a progressive structure. To avoid paying the higher rates a company created lots of sub companies and spread the income out so each paid an amount just below the high tax rate. This was then stopped by the requirement to group the companies so they did pay the higher rates of tax. But then for anti-competitive purposes parent companies began to run subsidiary companies – not to make a profit but to make a loss (the exact opposite of what companies should be set up for in an economy). Using ‘cost accrual techniques’ and low income. e.g. run a small airline at a loss to compete with a budget airline to preserve their other profitable routes. Grouping then allowed their losses to be offset against the income of their profitable routes so less tax was paid. If a situation arose where the loss company was no longer needed the losses could be retained but limited liability remained as a protection for the parent company. A long time ago the progressive tax rates on companies were removed and company tax was made a flat tax rate but nobody got rid of this ability to group companies. The companies wanted it kept. It is overdue to get rid of grouping.
  • Without a capital revenue distinction and strict application of entity status, shifting assets between separate legal entities will generate taxable income because their status as a separate legal entity now becomes important for tax purposes. With less advantage in having separate legal entities, companies will become bigger which will improve transparency and reduce the ability to avoid tax or scrutiny.  This reset will work with international trends to improve transparency. With more potential exposure to risk, behaviour and focus will change.
• A company to trade in New Zealand must be required to have a company registered and based in New Zealand through which all its activities are subject to tax that are ‘sourced’ from New Zealand. And they must have a New Zealand bank account. An asset in New Zealand can’t be owned by a foreign based organisation in a tax haven as the risk of tax avoidance is too high. If there is not a base in New Zealand, e.g internet sales, then work must be done with banks on how sales can be caught for tax or punishments if not.  This is already a tax issue and not created by this reset.
• In ‘Part D (of this series) – Beneficial impacts for all with no capital/revenue distinction and less tax minimisation’ I go through more discussion of these points. In particular how taxing disposals of cash accumulations is not double tax but sends a beneficial push into quality and price for goods and services.

Economic policy and tax principles alignment

This reset does four main actions:

1. It removes the structural drivers for all the six economic problems listed above. Obviously other actions need to be taken in addition to tax for issues like international relations. This reset does not restrict actions but better supports them.

2. It stops almost all tax avoidance techniques based on currently ‘legal’ processes. Nobody is telling business how to run their business or control what they do. The choices are all still with the business, it is just the consequences and risks that will be fully carried by the chooser.

3. It removes any incentive to waste or damage the environment, or any assets, as all costs will be fully carried by the producer. Because things will cost more, the throw away culture will not be structurally supported by the tax system. Note – things are costing more now but with no quality improvement. Quality has the chance to come back.

4. It redirects investment capital to producing goods and services to meet the needs of society. With interest no longer deductible for tax there will less demand to debt finance. Finance will therefore be freed up for investment in actually producing goods and services. Yes some capital will be taken up to hold assets like land but that is a good investment at the moment. The purpose of debt financing is largely cost accrual competition. Part B of this series has more on the potential positive changes in how investment may occur.

But is this economically viable? We must look at the numbers.

Financial impact of reset

From the Statistics New Zealand website we have the ‘Annual enterprise survey: 2017 financial year (provisional)’.

It states for businesses/enterprises the:

• total income for New Zealand is $644.2b (billion) and total expenditure is $560.7b.

• Surplus potentially subject to tax = $83.5b   (If the current tax of 28% was applied, this = $23.38b)

• 2017 Inland Revenue Annual report, says corporates actually paid $14.2b.

For contrast from the Inland Revenue website 2017 annual report –

• Total tax in 2017 was $69.2b and Individuals paid 48% ($33.2b) plus GST 26% ($17.9b) = 74% of total tax was paid by you and me.

Taxation under a reset calculation – A soft transition calculation

The existing tax rate of 28% could be used or a lower rate of 15%. But if we aim to increase taxation because it is sorely needed for social purposes, and to pay down debt, and we don’t want to cause too much business disruption, then the following is an option.

• Businesses claimed they had $83.5b income over expenses for the 2017 year.

• If we initially taxed all companies at 10% of total income, no deductions for costs (except domestic salary and wages). And indexed to go up in future years. This will give a massive boost to small business.

• • $644.2b x 10% = $64.42b tax.

• As business had $83.5b over costs it means there is income available to pay the $64.42b tax. They would have to shift profit expectations and likely no dividends.  Impacts will depend on the individual business. If we add in the Individuals tax, and ‘other’ ($37.1b) tax paid that year (I leave out GST as it must be dropped – as it damages the economy) we would have: a total tax for 2017 of $101.2b

• The amount of 10% should be indexed to go up 1% every one, or two or so years, until it reaches 15% or 20% or whatever the government of the time decides. The 10% rate is too low for the urgent needs of climate change and human need. (The cost is higher now because actions were not taken earlier, and business in aggregate has not supported taking action sooner, in fact they hindered action).

Other taxes?

• This increase in tax collected is without any new wealth tax or capital gains tax, and with a reduction of the headline tax rate. But there may be other reasons to do new taxes. In times of war. Or environmental crisis. Or a housing crisis. Tax is so low at the moment and the social needs so pressing, plus the debt must be paid down, that the amount of tax to be paid must go up.

Easier compliance

• Another reset benefit is it could be possible/investigated to require all money deposits to a non-individual to go through one bank account with an instant deduction for 10% tax. A credit can come back once a salary or wage payment is made in the Inland Revenue employer account. This means no provisional tax or due dates to worry about. A great compliance saver for small business. Obviously all bank accounts would have to be linked to an IR number to prevent avoidance but if all non-individuals bank accounts were automatically subject to tax, then that removes some temptation to avoid tax liability.

The economy context

• This reset is still only income that is being taxed; something that has ‘come in’. So money is there. Any realised capital gains would also be taxed because they would have ‘come in’. But as there are avoidance techniques for companies to delay gains coming in I am not expecting much to be collected under this category, initially. But a rising tax rate might persuade them to come forward earlier. But we could use the ‘risk free rate of return method’ to calculate this ‘income’. But that would be at least 15%. Other options to capture unrealised gains are being discussed in the wider media.

• If large businesses say they will go out of business, then that shows just how dependent they are on the tax subsidy.  So are they truly viable?  The slow introduction of a lower but more effective rate would give them time to adapt to moving away from debt financing, and high cost structures. But there are many more effective ways to achieve this change. I don’t expect them to move away from their marketing techniques but they would pay that cost without being subsidised by taxpayers. Issues with marketing and consumer protection can be dealt with separately but those actions will be undermined by the current tax system. Actions will be more effective with a tax reset.

• To stick to the concept of government spending being less than 30% of GDP reduces our ability to create wealth through the multiplier effect.  A demand driven economy will bring better economic growth that actually satisfies people’s needs. The only risk to a demand driven economy is how to control pricing and inflation, (I propose an article on this at a later time). We tried supply side economics and we have poverty, housing shortages, housing inflation, a struggling health sector, and an education system beholden to overseas students.

Perfect timing

• The recent talk about inflation and stagflation in part due to supply chain disruption make it the perfect time for the reset to happen as it will reduce business sector demand. All large businesses will be strongly focused on reducing their high cost business structure which will reduce demand and take pressure off inflation. Recall that a lot of business sector demand is micro business churn to drive price and demand up for their product or service. It is not growing the economy except in an incidental sense.  Innovation, exports or savings are not being driven in the macro sense by that spending. By contrast small businesses with the lower tax rate will be opening up, increasing competition. I talk about inflation in Part B of this series but will require a further analysis.

Summary – we must reset ‘the normal principles of taxation’

• This reset is not about political sides or ideas. It is about making the economy work as it is supposed to, meeting people’s wants and needs.
• If we believe in markets with businesses competing on price and quality then this tax reset must be done because the current tax system undermines that, or
• If we see the economic system is failing and people are falling through the cracks then this tells us one of the main reasons why and how to fix it.

The current tax system is breaking the economy and society. We are a frog in a pot that’s been on the stove for a while.

• Further evidence the tax system is broken is seen in the US which has the same basic principles of our system and many of their largest companies aren’t paying much tax, e.g.  Amazon, Honeywell, Halliburton, IBM, Fedex, Nike, US steel, Chevron, Delta. These companies are even managing through globalisation to avoid capital gain taxes. So we can’t just rely on new taxes to solve the existing problems. The foundation, ’Income tax’ must be fixed and this reset is how to do it so the big companies pay their fair share.

• Minimising tax is big business for every large firm. For the cost of a small team of accountants they can structure finances to avoid billions or hundreds of millions of dollars in tax. The purpose of tax is to redistribute wealth but ‘the normal principles of taxation’ are discouraging redistribution so economies and societies are struggling, with small businesses disadvantaged and people’s wants and needs not being met.

• The reset here retains largely the same tax system with all business treated the same. But the reset strips the rules down so there is nowhere to hide or shift the money. Because it is in the rules where the loopholes are found. And the rules/legislation are written with the normal principles of taxation firmly in mind, and with considerable input from those accountants who are deeply embedded in tax orthodoxy. The business sector has had a significant input into developing tax law and the business sector likes lots of red tape rules as it offers lots of loopholes.

• In this reset you can’t shift money between income (subject to tax) to capital (not subject to tax). A person can’t reduce their tax by claiming expenses real or imagined. There are no losses or capital losses. I suspect the reason why we don’t have a capital gains tax in New Zealand is the fear of capital losses undermining future government revenue along with complexity of the law – but this reset shuts down those fears.
• With this reset the tax system becomes much simpler and more transparent. This is why stripping the rules back, as is proposed in this reset, is actually the only way to get a truly broad based low rate income tax system.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: For the full analysis, please download the PDF which includes: Part A, Part B, Part C, Part D, Part E of this long-form report.

About the author: Stephen Minto lives in Wellington with his two children. He worked for New Zealand Inland Revenue Department for approximately 33 years and is now enjoying no longer being bound by public service etiquette of being non-political.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Taxation is the mechanism for redistribution of wealth to combat inequality and for redirecting resources to build a society. But our current tax principles though largely hidden or not understood by ordinary people, lie at the root of all our current inequality and struggling economy. Struggling at least for ordinary people. This article shows our current tax principles are central to our economic problems. Understand and fix tax and we are on a path to greater economic security and wealth for all, a ‘citizens economy’.

Special Analysis by Stephen Minto.

In my article ‘Housing – We can’t build our way out of this housing affordability crisis.’ on 23 August 2021 I looked at the economic structure driving housing affordability and how to solve it.  I identified ‘the normal principles of taxation’ as a major factor driving excessive investor demand. 

Those normal principles are helping create three of the main problems we are facing in our society:

• tax avoidance, 
• inequality, generating poverty (including the housing affordability crisis),
• environmental damage, and the resulting multiple related crisis’s. (e.g climate).

These three problems show the current ‘normal principles of taxation’ are sending the wrong economic signals to the economy and distorting it away from its primary purpose, the supply of goods and services to meet our society’s wants and needs. But there is a simple reset of the principles that removes the structural drivers currently creating these problems. And a reset is essential to fix these problems as new taxes or laws will just be lipstick on a pig if we don’t fix the underlying structural drivers.

This relatively easy reset does not require any international agreement or loss of autonomy for New Zealand.

What are ‘the normal principles of taxation’? 

At a very high level, income is identified by having three features:

• It comes in
• It is periodic (not one-offs)
• It has the character of income in the hand of the person who receives it.

From these base features principles arose. They have been adapted and interpreted through case law of a capital/revenue distinction. That can be defined as:

• Capital is not taxed but revenue is, so some businesses try to label items as capital to reduce their tax bill. A lot of the Pandora Papers covers this type of ‘legal’ activity.
• A sale of a farm, as a one off, is generally capital and not subject to tax. You would expect that to be reinvested somewhere rather than used to live off. But the sale of produce from the farm (periodic – used to live off) is taxable.
• Expenditure incurred to gain that ‘income’ should be deducted before tax is paid. Money spent to gain income is not really income that can be taxed.
• So you get gross income and net income. 
• Expenditure incurred can’t be questioned. 
• Costs to run a business can’t be questioned for taxation because it is up to the owners how to run the business regardless of the consequences or how sensible they are.  

These are enough principles for my purposes; but inherent and inseparable in these principles are some values:

• tax is a cost, and
• it is legitimate and necessary for efficiency to minimise that cost. Like you would with any other cost. 

But there is the catch in this, tax is not a normal cost.

Why are these ‘normal principles of taxation’ a problem?

Here are six points that explain why the principles send the wrong economic signals to the whole economy and undermine economic growth.

1. They undermine comparative advantage and encourage monopoly 

(Small businesses with lower costs should have an advantage in price over big firms. But larger firms use costs to reduce their tax to give them an advantage.)

• Business is supposed to be efficient and reduce costs, to be competitive. The theory goes, by driving down costs you drive down price which is better for satisfying consumers wants and needs. This is more efficient and only business can do this as government is wasteful and costly.

• But this same efficiency driver on a micro business level sees tax as a cost that a business gets nothing for on a balance sheet.  So to avoid tax, a dead cost, the ‘normal principles of taxation’ allow them to grow other costs to not only prevent having to pay tax, but also to do things that drive up the price of their goods and services so they gain more profit.

• We all know and experience the marketing techniques that large business use to keep their profits high, or how they run anti-competitive practises to undermine competitors. e.g. run an airline along the routes of a competitor so they don’t grow and move into their high cost routes. And these techniques cost a lot. They rely on big data from loyalty cards, slick advertising, changing superficial designs with new releases, glamorous shops, etc. And they rely on access to debit financing. These are just ‘normal’ large business practises based on behavioural/marketing psychology and finance.  

• So large businesses don’t mind incurring these costs because they will reduce the ‘dead cost’ taxation they have to pay. And it is a big saving, 28% on every dollar spent. So consumers/taxpayers in having a reduced tax are actually helping large companies pay for techniques to make us pay more money for their goods or services. So we pay twice for their supplied good or service – once on the high/‘discounted’ price and second through the tax subsidy. 

• Small businesses simply can’t afford to run the same techniques or access debt finance in the way a large firm can. Their whole pricing structure is done differently; they reduce their costs and run a tight ship. These economic rules simply don’t apply to large business because the normal principles of taxation turn costs into an asset for them – a tool to drive out smaller competitors while driving up price.  Small firms can’t compete against these large firms no matter how good the quality or price they charge for their good or service. 

• Another perverse result is large businesses become less concerned about quality and service in part because like any large bureaucracy they have to wear a few problems. But also in part because large businesses not only compete on price and quality, but compete through ‘cost accrual competition’. The ability to accumulate costs that work to their advantage over smaller competitors. And it is profitable and relatively easy and ‘legal’, but it shifts a large business’ focus away from innovation and building quality or low price, and into a focus on gimmicks and primal manipulations to trick us to buy. And it reduces competition as smaller firms can only compete by reducing costs and there is a limit to that. 

• We can see this most easily in fast food and retail where there has been a slide into franchise. The Chemist Warehouse is one of the most recent. Costs on the floor are tight but the marketing, site location rental, management fees, executive salaries, advertising, debt financing are all high cost. In a generation the smaller owner run businesses taking pride in their business are largely gone from New Zealand.  So many small businesses struggle and fail because it’s hard to find niches to escape the larger firms relying on costs and turnover to drive their pricing. Cost efficiency is no longer a key economic driver for a large business; ‘cost accrual competition’ through saving tax is the easiest way to wealth. 

• In addition larger businesses are more likely to spend on vanity expenses because it still reduces their tax bill so it gives them an advantages over smaller competitors.  e.g. take a lease on property in prestigious locations, purchase on finance or lease luxury cars, still get a 50% deduction for business ‘entertainment’ expenses – meals and lunches, tickets and who knows what else.
• ‘The normal principles of taxation’ remove the natural competitive advantage of a low cost business supplying the same goods and services. These smaller business are normally New Zealand owned and operated.  And to catch that advantage all businesses have to follow that high cost model, and treat tax as a cost to be minimised, leading to larger and larger businesses leading to monopoly capitalism. Cost accrual competition is a powerful economic tool and we the taxpayer are subsiding it to only some people’s advantage. 

2. They undermine redistribution of wealth (tax) and the resulting economic stimulus 

• Almost all businesses do not create wealth, they simply accumulate wealth.  And to accumulate they rely on the education and health systems to support access to employees and customers. They also rely on infrastructure, courts, police etc in which to do business. Tax minimisation, avoidance and evasion, undercuts the process of redistribution of wealth which pays for the supply of these services and therefore it undercuts the provision of the services the business needs to function with. 

• Redistribution by taxation also supports demand across the economy which in turn supports business accumulation of wealth. The ‘tax is a cost to be minimised’ attitude comes from the normal principles of taxation, but tax helps promote the multiplier effect which benefits the entire economy. The principles need to change so that no business has an incentive, and mechanism provided by the principles, to minimise tax, as it works against the long term supply of goods and services, within the economy.

• Tax is like no other cost as it is not fixed. The principles calculate it as a relative cost based on what income is left over after costs. So on a micro economic level a business see’s an advantage to run up costs to minimise payment of tax. But on a macro economic level that minimisation is damaging the economy in which it functions. Tax minimisation is actually an act of self harm by a business in the long term. The normal principles of taxation are creating the problem.  

3. They subsidise risk taking and provide no choice for taxpayers on doing that.

• By allowing business to deduct expenses to reduce their income that is liable for tax; it makes the New Zealand taxpayer subsidise the provision of that good or service through sacrificing tax collected. And as said before the saving is not always passed on, prices are held high and profit maximised so consumers are not getting the benefit of the subsidy. The normal principles of taxation allow no choice for society on making this subsidy. e.g. huge amounts of investment resources can be used to subsidise the business of taking rich people on tourism flights to space. Would people vote for that choice, over lifting more children out of poverty? But there is no vote, we have no choice, and it is tax revenue we could have.

• The entrepreneur who has the knowledge to make these choices about what costs to incur should take the risk for those choices. Choices and risks should not be subsidised by taxpayers or government as that is not their role.  

• If the people or the elected representatives decide to subsidise an activity that is okay. And that is very different from a blanket subsidy as happens currently under ‘the normal principles of taxation’.  

4. They punish innovation or the efficient use of resources

If two businesses supply the same good or service but one does it at a higher cost than the other, why should the lower cost company pay more tax?   This is not good economic policy.

• The Lazy Inefficient company B has more expenses ($100)  so only pays $14 in tax but the efficient/innovative company A ($50 in expenses) pays $14 more tax at $28. 

• The normal principles of taxation are sheltering poorly performing companies, and punishing well performing companies. And the taxpayers through having less tax collected are subsidising the inefficient poorly performing company. 

• And the principles allow more investment income to be made available to this poorly performing company. i.e. wasting scare investment capital. (If B did not get the tax subsidy and had to also pay $28 in tax like efficient company A, then Lazy inefficient B would only get $8 to reinvest). 

• To those who say the high cost of B could be due to the quality service they provide. Yes, and that will mark them out from their competitors, and that quality should sell them.  But there is no way for the blunt instrument of taxation to tell the difference of quality to wasteful spending; so it shouldn’t. If customers don’t want that business’s ‘quality’ then that is a market signal. There is no reason for the taxpayers to subsidise a business’s choices on quality as the entrepreneur might be right or wrong and there is no way to tell, except by the customer.

• More can be said on this example but it does not change the fundamental point that the wrong economic signals are being sent. e.g. Company A could have less customers and be price matching to Company B to maximise their profit rather than passing on the savings from innovation to their customers. Company B becomes a tool to make customers pay more as its existence takes up some demand, which slows the introduction of potential new competitors. This is another reason to have B out. This shows tax is only part of fixing the economy but a very very important part. 

5. They subsidise environmental damage or resource waste by creating an externality

• Of course not all companies have high cost structures because they run anti-competitive practise, or have vanity expenses, or they are just seeking tax minimisation. Some businesses, are just very costly to undertake and there is nothing inefficient about that, e.g. mining. 

• But should the costs to run those enterprises be subsidised by the taxpayers taking a reduced tax collection? The high costs of those business choices should be borne by the risk taking entrepreneur with the knowledge to take those risks. 

• For example, if you do the Hump Ridge track you see some great wooden viaducts used to bring out the timber from a milling operation. The devastation of the local forest was complete but the business as reported never made a profit as its costs were so high and the sales income never fully came in. New Zealand got nothing of substance out of this destructive exploitation. Yes workers got wages and scrimped a life of remote hardship. The directors would have got income along the way. Yes there is now some tourism value but it’s probably not much more than if it was left. Overall, the value of the forest asset was wasted without profit. The ecological and cultural value lost can’t be quantified.

• The same destruction and waste occurred in the areas around the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ in the inner Whanganui. All over New Zealand subsistence businesses were supported by ‘the normal principles of taxation’ for people to eke out an existence to the detriment of traditional Maori life and culture, the environment, and their own lives. The ‘normal principles of taxation’ were one of the systems within colonial exploitation that allowed profits to be stripped back overseas without as much redistributive effect from an effective taxation. The principles were a tool to strip value out of the new nation as the costs of exploitation were offset to the income.  It is a tool in a class system that strips income away from the redistribution/taxation process. 

Colonial legacy justification and creation of an externality

• Yes, you can argue that this sort of tax subsidy for business was necessary to enable economic activity in new lands. And that is the colonial argument. From where we stand today we can see the waste and destruction of that legacy and thinking. Our climate and environment is imperilled because of it. But it’s still happening, that structure is still in existence within the normal principles of taxation, and it is helping drive environmental damage and climate change. The rules were made through judge law to favour the wealthy to help drive their, or their class’s, wealth. This reset will at least make the full cost fall on the risk takers and they will at least be more careful in future because the cost will fall on them fully. 

Ongoing impact

• If income from a business  activity almost matches the cost of the activity, then very little tax is paid. So when the good is being sold the price does not reflect the cost of society’s human and physical infrastructure that was required to support that activity. Because tax was reduced this cost is not calculated into that sale price. i.e. a seller will work for the highest price but if the cost of production is subsidised, the threshold for the sale price is being subsidised and the true cost is not reflected in the price resulting in false economic signals being sent to producers. The normal principles of taxation are creating an externality of the cost of society.

• A business must fully contribute from its income back to society through paying tax or there is no point in society letting the business be in existence. Like the purchase of the viaducts, or the mill boilers, tax is just a cost that should be factored in and you can’t avoid it.

• Each business or activity needs to be viable in its own right so it has a cost that reflects if it is a high cost activity. Current loss offsetting hides a costly activity and dissuades companies funding research or looking for alternatives to get around high costs. Subsidising by tax undermines that drive for innovation. 

• Environmentally damaging activities like mining are one such activity where if the cost of tax was not able to be avoided, a higher price would generate more focus on recycling, or innovation to find alternatives. See more comment under heading ‘Different sectors have different impacts’

• It is no longer appropriate for our business community to be molly coddled and subsidised by socialising their costs onto the New Zealand taxpayer, the government, and the environment.

6. The ‘normal principles of taxation’ are helping cause an international destabilisation problem.

• President Xi in China is crushing democracy in Hong Kong as he see’s it as a vehicle to undermine China. But he is fighting the wrong enemy. As a former colony of Great Britain Hong Kong follows the basic outline of ‘the normal principles of taxation’. And most of the tax principles were set through english case law by judges who arguably have acted in their own or their class’s economic interest when making decisions that set precedent. As a colony these tax principles facilitated economic value being stripped away from the colony and the lands near it to the benefit of the ‘mother country’. In the post colonial world we still see these tax principles being used to strip value out of countries with little tax paid, and then into tax havens for the use of the billionaire owners of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others. 

• China has become the factory of the world as large multinational companies moved manufacturing there for cheap resources and low regulation. President Xi wants the work and business to stay so it will give stability and economic strength to China. He was recently reported on CNN  Aug 18, 2021 by Laura He as pushing on China’s rich to redistribute wealth. So he can see problems in his nation but he is asking business people bound by a tax system to act outside that system. His quest for security by taking on democracy and the Uyghur people means he is no longer walking with his people as a leader, using the wisdom of the crowd to guide his nation but is leaning into an inherently unstable autocratic leadership model. And he is adding fuel to the cold war that leaders in the US, UK and Australia, seem willing to hype up in a new alliance. He has chosen the wrong enemy; it is the colonial based tax structure that is undermining China’s security, e.g Transfer Pricing and Thin Capitalisation are able to undermine revenue and the ability to grow domestic based businesses in a way that spreads wealth. That has to be dealt with by simple consistent rules as suggested here that do not favour multinationals, as the current normal principles of taxation do. Democracy needs to be decoupled from exploitive capitalism and a tax reset will help do that. 

• And the ‘west’ is also struggling with conflict and polarisation in society, driven through culture war issues like immigration, climate change, vaccines, and abortion rights. In the ‘west’ the culture wars are facilitated through a dysfunctional 4th estate and poor quality democratic processes. These culture wars have some urgency for ordinary people, ‘taking our jobs, taking our opportunities’, but theses are just the scapegoats for the very real economic struggle many are experiencing. It’s about the economy getting polarised. Ultimately the western nations have the same enemy as China in the poor functioning of the tax system. The tax system is helping build monopolies, facilitating tax avoidance, and undermining local businesses. We are all poorer. 

• The normal principles of taxation are well overdue for a complete overhaul so they build each nation’s economy and redistribute wealth, and that is the purpose of taxation, not to concentrate wealth and build tax havens. 

• Note: The need for international trade by New Zealand will not be impacted by these changes but it may, or may not, modify it. And with the supply chain disruption brought by the Covid-19 Pandemic, it makes it an excellent time to bring in changes that will ameliorate the disruption we are already experiencing. It will help our nations build back on to a more sustainable path.

How shall we reset ‘the normal principles of taxation’?

• In the media and policy world the strongest reset theme for taxation is greater transparency and sharing of information from other jurisdictions (especially tax havens) so tax can be claimed. This is all essential work that needs to be done but transparency and sharing information does not remove the structural problems created by the principles. And the current principles have created a complex set of rules that are an administrative burden.

• And the creation of new taxes like wealth taxes will not deal with the structural drivers of wealth concentration.  As the Pandora papers show the normal principles of taxation are a major driver of wealth concentration and tax avoidance.

• I propose a structural reset that uses existing economic understandings which therefore won’t destabilise the economy, and it works alongside the existing market forces, sending appropriate signals to the economy. 

The two main reset actions are: 

1. Remove deductibility for all expenses except for domestic salary and wage payments.

2. No capital revenue distinction for non-individuals.

This is supported by:

• A very broad legislative definition of ‘income’ to ensure everything that comes in is taxed regardless of traditional capital revenue distinctions. Even to include related party loans (with an exception for 3rd party loans – perhaps a strict list of who can be a 3rd party). The Pandora papers show this is essential regardless of even this reset. Because the current normal principles of taxation allow a company to make income but then through a series of entities turn it into a loan to be made back to the company or another related party and a ‘loan’ is not taxable. Part C, in this series, gives an example. 
• No grouping of companies for tax purposes. Companies are separate legal entities and will be treated that way for tax. 
  • The original intention of grouping was to prevent tax avoidance but it has now been twisted to be a major tax minimisation technique. i.e. Company tax rates in the past had a progressive structure. To avoid paying the higher rates a company created lots of sub companies and spread the income out so each paid an amount just below the high tax rate. This was then stopped by the requirement to group the companies so they did pay the higher rates of tax. But then for anti-competitive purposes parent companies began to run subsidiary companies – not to make a profit but to make a loss (the exact opposite of what companies should be set up for in an economy). Using ‘cost accrual techniques’ and low income. e.g. run a small airline at a loss to compete with a budget airline to preserve their other profitable routes. Grouping then allowed their losses to be offset against the income of their profitable routes so less tax was paid. If a situation arose where the loss company was no longer needed the losses could be retained but limited liability remained as a protection for the parent company. A long time ago the progressive tax rates on companies were removed and company tax was made a flat tax rate but nobody got rid of this ability to group companies. The companies wanted it kept. It is overdue to get rid of grouping.
  • Without a capital revenue distinction and strict application of entity status, shifting assets between separate legal entities will generate taxable income because their status as a separate legal entity now becomes important for tax purposes. With less advantage in having separate legal entities, companies will become bigger which will improve transparency and reduce the ability to avoid tax or scrutiny.  This reset will work with international trends to improve transparency. With more potential exposure to risk, behaviour and focus will change.
• A company to trade in New Zealand must be required to have a company registered and based in New Zealand through which all its activities are subject to tax that are ‘sourced’ from New Zealand. And they must have a New Zealand bank account. An asset in New Zealand can’t be owned by a foreign based organisation in a tax haven as the risk of tax avoidance is too high. If there is not a base in New Zealand, e.g internet sales, then work must be done with banks on how sales can be caught for tax or punishments if not.  This is already a tax issue and not created by this reset.
• In ‘Part D (of this series) – Beneficial impacts for all with no capital/revenue distinction and less tax minimisation’ I go through more discussion of these points. In particular how taxing disposals of cash accumulations is not double tax but sends a beneficial push into quality and price for goods and services.

Economic policy and tax principles alignment

This reset does four main actions:

1. It removes the structural drivers for all the six economic problems listed above. Obviously other actions need to be taken in addition to tax for issues like international relations. This reset does not restrict actions but better supports them. 

2. It stops almost all tax avoidance techniques based on currently ‘legal’ processes. Nobody is telling business how to run their business or control what they do. The choices are all still with the business, it is just the consequences and risks that will be fully carried by the chooser.  

3. It removes any incentive to waste or damage the environment, or any assets, as all costs will be fully carried by the producer. Because things will cost more, the throw away culture will not be structurally supported by the tax system. Note – things are costing more now but with no quality improvement. Quality has the chance to come back.

4. It redirects investment capital to producing goods and services to meet the needs of society. With interest no longer deductible for tax there will less demand to debt finance. Finance will therefore be freed up for investment in actually producing goods and services. Yes some capital will be taken up to hold assets like land but that is a good investment at the moment. The purpose of debt financing is largely cost accrual competition. Part B of this series has more on the potential positive changes in how investment may occur.

But is this economically viable? We must look at the numbers.  

Financial impact of reset

From the Statistics New Zealand website we have the ‘Annual enterprise survey: 2017 financial year (provisional)’.

It states for businesses/enterprises the:

• total income for New Zealand is $644.2b (billion) and total expenditure is $560.7b. 

• Surplus potentially subject to tax = $83.5b   (If the current tax of 28% was applied, this = $23.38b)

• 2017 Inland Revenue Annual report, says corporates actually paid $14.2b.

For contrast from the Inland Revenue website 2017 annual report – 

• Total tax in 2017 was $69.2b and Individuals paid 48% ($33.2b) plus GST 26% ($17.9b) = 74% of total tax was paid by you and me.  

Taxation under a reset calculation – A soft transition calculation

The existing tax rate of 28% could be used or a lower rate of 15%. But if we aim to increase taxation because it is sorely needed for social purposes, and to pay down debt, and we don’t want to cause too much business disruption, then the following is an option.

• Businesses claimed they had $83.5b income over expenses for the 2017 year.

• If we initially taxed all companies at 10% of total income, no deductions for costs (except domestic salary and wages). And indexed to go up in future years. This will give a massive boost to small business.

• • $644.2b x 10% = $64.42b tax.

• As business had $83.5b over costs it means there is income available to pay the $64.42b tax. They would have to shift profit expectations and likely no dividends.  Impacts will depend on the individual business. If we add in the Individuals tax, and ‘other’ ($37.1b) tax paid that year (I leave out GST as it must be dropped – as it damages the economy) we would have: a total tax for 2017 of $101.2b 

• The amount of 10% should be indexed to go up 1% every one, or two or so years, until it reaches 15% or 20% or whatever the government of the time decides. The 10% rate is too low for the urgent needs of climate change and human need. (The cost is higher now because actions were not taken earlier, and business in aggregate has not supported taking action sooner, in fact they hindered action).

Other taxes?

• This increase in tax collected is without any new wealth tax or capital gains tax, and with a reduction of the headline tax rate. But there may be other reasons to do new taxes. In times of war. Or environmental crisis. Or a housing crisis.  Tax is so low at the moment and the social needs so pressing, plus the debt must be paid down, that the amount of tax to be paid must go up. 

Easier compliance

• Another reset benefit is it could be possible/investigated to require all money deposits to a non-individual to go through one bank account with an instant deduction for 10% tax. A credit can come back once a salary or wage payment is made in the Inland Revenue employer account. This means no provisional tax or due dates to worry about. A great compliance saver for small business. Obviously all bank accounts would have to be linked to an IR number to prevent avoidance but if all non-individuals bank accounts were automatically subject to tax, then that removes some temptation to avoid tax liability.

The economy context

• This reset is still only income that is being taxed; something that has ‘come in’. So money is there. Any realised capital gains would also be taxed because they would have ‘come in’. But as there are avoidance techniques for companies to delay gains coming in I am not expecting much to be collected under this category, initially. But a rising tax rate might persuade them to come forward earlier. But we could use the ‘risk free rate of return method’ to calculate this ‘income’. But that would be at least 15%. Other options to capture unrealised gains are being discussed in the wider media.

• If large businesses say they will go out of business, then that shows just how dependent they are on the tax subsidy.  So are they truly viable?  The slow introduction of a lower but more effective rate would give them time to adapt to moving away from debt financing, and high cost structures. But there are many more effective ways to achieve this change. I don’t expect them to move away from their marketing techniques but they would pay that cost without being subsidised by taxpayers. Issues with marketing and consumer protection can be dealt with separately but those actions will be undermined by the current tax system. Actions will be more effective with a tax reset.  

• To stick to the concept of government spending being less than 30% of GDP reduces our ability to create wealth through the multiplier effect.  A demand driven economy will bring better economic growth that actually satisfies people’s needs. The only risk to a demand driven economy is how to control pricing and inflation, (I propose an article on this at a later time). We tried supply side economics and we have poverty, housing shortages, housing inflation, a struggling health sector, and an education system beholden to overseas students.

Perfect timing

• The recent talk about inflation and stagflation in part due to supply chain disruption make it the perfect time for the reset to happen as it will reduce business sector demand. All large businesses will be strongly focused on reducing their high cost business structure which will reduce demand and take pressure off inflation. Recall that a lot of business sector demand is micro business churn to drive price and demand up for their product or service. It is not growing the economy except in an incidental sense.  Innovation, exports or savings are not being driven in the macro sense by that spending. By contrast small businesses with the lower tax rate will be opening up, increasing competition. I talk about inflation in Part B of this series but will require a further analysis. 

Summary – we must reset ‘the normal principles of taxation’

• This reset is not about political sides or ideas. It is about making the economy work as it is supposed to, meeting people’s wants and needs. 
• If we believe in markets with businesses competing on price and quality then this tax reset must be done because the current tax system undermines that, or
• If we see the economic system is failing and people are falling through the cracks then this tells us one of the main reasons why and how to fix it. 

The current tax system is breaking the economy and society. We are a frog in a pot that’s been on the stove for a while.

• Further evidence the tax system is broken is seen in the US which has the same basic principles of our system and many of their largest companies aren’t paying much tax, e.g.  Amazon, Honeywell, Halliburton, IBM, Fedex, Nike, US steel, Chevron, Delta. These companies are even managing through globalisation to avoid capital gain taxes. So we can’t just rely on new taxes to solve the existing problems. The foundation, ’Income tax’ must be fixed and this reset is how to do it so the big companies pay their fair share.

• Minimising tax is big business for every large firm. For the cost of a small team of accountants they can structure finances to avoid billions or hundreds of millions of dollars in tax. The purpose of tax is to redistribute wealth but ‘the normal principles of taxation’ are discouraging redistribution so economies and societies are struggling, with small businesses disadvantaged and people’s wants and needs not being met. 

• The reset here retains largely the same tax system with all business treated the same. But the reset strips the rules down so there is nowhere to hide or shift the money. Because it is in the rules where the loopholes are found. And the rules/legislation are written with the normal principles of taxation firmly in mind, and with considerable input from those accountants who are deeply embedded in tax orthodoxy. The business sector has had a significant input into developing tax law and the business sector likes lots of red tape rules as it offers lots of loopholes. 

• In this reset you can’t shift money between income (subject to tax) to capital (not subject to tax). A person can’t reduce their tax by claiming expenses real or imagined. There are no losses or capital losses. I suspect the reason why we don’t have a capital gains tax in New Zealand is the fear of capital losses undermining future government revenue along with complexity of the law – but this reset shuts down those fears.

• With this reset the tax system becomes much simpler and more transparent. This is why stripping the rules back, as is proposed in this reset, is actually the only way to get a truly broad based low rate income tax system. 

Note: Even if the government only takes the tiniest initial step along this path by removing the deductibility of interest. This will slow the incentive to debt finance, which will undercut many of the negative tax practises. And with lower demand for loans it will help redirect investment to new projects or innovation. We will start the journey to a more efficient tax system that builds the entire economy and society.

It is overdue to change ‘the normal principles of taxation’. Write to your MP’s and tell them so over and over again. Because some self-interested businesses do the opposite, a lot. They forever talk about black hole expenditure and of this situation or that. Just recently the government allowed deductions for feasibility expenditure – that is normally capital expenditure and not a deduction. So the rules are going one way all the time to allow more and more costs. This reset removes most of that and simply moves the dial back the other way. This reset is not breaking the tax system anymore than it can be said the feasibility changes are.  We all know from the Pandora papers the income tax system is stuffed but surprisingly it’s not impossible to fix.

———————

PART B – The six reset actions in New Zealand – for the normal principles of taxation

The six actions are:

1. Remove deductibility for all expenses except for domestic salary and wage payments.

2. No capital revenue distinction for non-individuals (variation for a private home in a trust or other entity).

3. Imputation and other related memorandum accounts should be ceased.

4. Introduce some restrictions on charitable status, and donations.

5. Remove GST as a tax (alternative taxes could be considered to replace if needed).

6. Tax evasion (tax avoidance is dealt with by the above proposals) become fully engaged by the New Zealand Police – financial intelligence unit.

1. Remove deductibility for all expenses except for domestic salary and wage payments.

• A deduction for domestic employment gives encouragement to employ people, and to reward them well is not a drag on the business (e.g. no claim for wages if you set up a call centre in another country). Easy to audit the claims as domestic salary and wage records are kept within the NZ tax system.
• This removes cost accrual competition and reduces the opportunity to avoid tax. It would structurally set the idea that tax is just a cost that business must pay.
• This action gives comparative advantage to low cost locally based businesses. This will encourage small start ups. Small businesses allow more opportunity for ideas and innovation to be pursued. It encourages peoples enthusiasm to pursue their ideas. More people are employed in small businesses.
• This action simply aligns costs that set up the business (capital and not deductible) with costs to run the business as (revenue and deductible) so neither expense is deductible for tax (Just like employee’s aren’t allowed any deductions). Currently larger companies find it easier to set up intervening companies which will incur the capital costs but then on-charge the capital costs through the intervening company so they look like revenue costs. This sort of tax minimisation ceases.  Smaller companies benefit.
• It will promote fair competition, and economic efficiency by recognising the above comparative advantage of a business with a lower cost structure, leading to less waste of resources while encouraging New Zealand based business which could lead to a lower carbon footprint.
• The tax system would be easier and less costly to comply with and administer. It would also make the introduction of the second reset action much simpler and less complicated.
• There are several significant impacts which will change the way business is likely to be organised (see below for a discussion of impacts). Just as the existing ‘normal principles of taxation’ are encouraging negative behaviour, the reset will encourage positive behaviour.
• Drawings would have to be paid through the IR employer system to be credited for deduction so taxed when received and included in social policy calculations. Or there is no deduction and it would still be required to be declared as income.

2. No capital revenue distinction for non-individuals (variation for a private home in a trust or other entity). [This means all money coming into the business is subject to tax unless expressly exempt. Currently if something is called capital you don’t need to pay tax on it. But with the reset all disposals of an asset are income, unless expressly exempt.]

• The objective is to simplify taxation and remove the opportunity to re-characterise something that is income into something that is capital to avoid tax. Currently capital ‘income’ (a one off) or ‘gain’ is not taxable because it is not considered income. The reality is this is an accounting fiction for a non-individual.   All actions by a non-individual advance the financial interest of that entity so its essence is one of generating income. Like a trader who buys and sells things that are capital items but if you sell with an intention of profit that is taxable. A non-individual often acts as part of a network of entities, or in a scheme of actions, so all actions have the character of income for a non-individual.
• Variation is just to allow a person living in a home but under a trust ownership, (somebody might need to protect the home so it is not lost in a business failure or loan situation) to continue to do so. One house only. It would probably need to be a public list to ensure compliance is not an issue. But perhaps there are other ways.
• A reset would require a legislative definition of ‘income’ for non-individuals. It would be simple like the feature ‘it must come in’. This would mean realised gains are taxed because liquidity of some sort is available to be taxed. The complexity to track gains drops away if we are just tracking the gains without considering expenses (although using the ‘Risk free rate of return’ method could be done and may be easier). Public companies must publish their financial accounts and they use this to promote their companies so I think the hiding of gains would not be easy. Some work would need to be done to ensure ‘off balance sheet’ gains are included. With a wide ‘income’ definition some specific items could be removed by an exemption (e.g. loans from 3rd parties). In Part C I give a situation where income is converted to a loan so it is not taxed. To stop this requires a very wide definition to be applied.
• There would be no losses because it is just gains – ‘it comes in’. There are no expenses to create losses. There would be no allowance of historical loses to roll forward. The risk of the loss remains with the entrepreneur, who has the knowledge to take the risk. Rather than the current situation where losses are socialised through the tax system by a reduced tax take.
• This is not a capital gains tax but a definition of ‘income’ issue. Much like the government of the time with the introduction of the  ‘Bright line test’ for property ‘rightly’ saying it was not a capital gains tax. And even if some do make the argument it is a capital gains tax this would still be false for individuals, and the fact that you can turn income into loans under current rules shows it is just an income definition issue.
• There are some big challenges and changes to how business would think and act for: exports, speculative business, high turnover business, (see below for a discussion of impacts).
• Because all disposals of an entity’s assets (capital) become income this changes how some items are viewed. A cash accumulation is an asset. So to send this back to the parent company will mean it is taxed. This has a positive impact on reinvestment in the company. For example, an aged care facility makes profits from caring for elderly residents. Profits can be reinvested to improve services or bring down prices. This is the purpose of the market mechanism. But it is hard to enter the market for aged care business to create a bit of competition (if we want that), meaning the market mechanism doesn’t work that well. So taxation on disposal of profit to an entity outside the company will have the effect of encouraging funds to stay in the company to improve services and pricing, and grow the business through quality and price. In the current tax framework there is too much focus on profit extraction to the detriment of service and quality. However we can predict that the reaction will be to make companies bigger so money is just transferred between units or sites. But still for assets to leave the company it will be taxed. Companies will have to be more careful about structures to ensure they only pay tax once when it leaves the company.
• More positive impacts are given in ‘Part D – Beneficial impacts for all with no capital/revenue distinction, and less tax minimisation.’ which will build better more responsible companies with less tax minimisation.

3. Imputation and other related memorandum accounts should be ceased.

• It was said to prevent ‘double taxation’. i.e. A person with a 33% personal liability for tax gets a credit for the 28% tax already paid by the company when the company pays the person a dividend. The person then just pays 5% extra or whatever rather than 33% or 38% on the dividend. Removal of the credit would function like a sort of wealth tax so they do pay the 33%, or 38%.
• Currently imputation encourages the payment of dividends to shareholders which strips investment capital out of companies. The prospect of taxation would encourage capital to remain in the company for growth, which is good for our economy.
• Easy to administer and collect as with payment of a dividend there is clearly income available, and it can be taxed at source. As income it avoids complaints about disposal of assets to pay a tax, which a wealth tax raises. (I’m not against wealth taxes, it’s just it still leaves in place the distorting income tax foundations, ‘the normal principles of taxation’, that lead to monopoly capitalism which necessitates the wealth tax).
• The traditional avoidance mechanism of bonus share issues would need to be prevented or declared taxable for an individual (with simple rules not complex ones).  For a non-individual the receipt of a bonus share would now be taxable with no distinction of capital – revenue.
• Because of imputation, tax rates on wealthy people in New Zealand are low and they are the main benefactors of dividends.

4. Introduce some restrictions on charitable status, and donations.

Amend advancement of religion exemption

• A church/religion doesn’t pay tax on a business if they are approved as advancing religion.  In a tolerant society your choice of religion should be your own and that personal choice should not reduce a citizen’s wider commitment to society by paying tax.
• It is harder in the modern world to see how the advancement of religion is a positive to society, e.g attitudes to vaccines, women etc.  Perhaps this exemption should only apply to that income used solely for the relief of poverty, the sick, or those in prison.
• The tax exemption means all taxpayers are in effect subsidising a person who might knock on your, or your neighbour’s, door to talk about their choice of religion.

Amend advancement of education

• The advancement of education should only apply where it is for the relief of poverty. A business is subject to tax and education is a business for some.
• This exemption might have been okay in an age when government did not provide free education to all. Now the exemption is sometimes to support people who want to make a choice about controlling their child’s education. That choice is their own and should not remove an obligation to contribute tax to the wider community.

Remove the donations rebate

• Donations should no longer generate a tax rebate. It is an administrative burden and has been subject to abuse. What you donate is your choice but once you can reduce your tax bill through a tax rebate/refund, it makes everyone a contributor to your personal choice. Let’s just keep it a personal choice.
• Previously there were arguments that services were not provided by government and this allows the gaps to be filled. In theory private enterprise can now fill those gaps and be self supporting. Government can assess the need and whether to fund that service or perhaps there are lower administration costs if government does it and that is an option.
• The current rules, the ‘Peter Dunne changes’, have allowed wealthy people to not pay any tax to government, but pay it all to their preferred charity. This creates a situation of winners and losers in funding rather than a spread of services to fulfil needs, and this is inefficient for the wider society. This is actually not charity or philanthropy but an undermining of community. If tax stays with the government we have better public accountability.
• And the experience with philanthropy is not great. The excess of charity to some, what a particular philanthropist thinks is the deserving charity  means some charities become vehicles for the fantasies of the wealthy. A well reported example was Bill Gates’ misguided support for small schools in the US which arose from his misunderstanding of statistics. He thought small schools gave better academic achievements but the statistics did not say this.  Huge waste and disruption followed his charity work.

The current rules on charities are undermining tax collection and our collective wealth. A rebate is undermining a citizen’s contribution to the wider society.

5. Remove GST as a tax (alternative taxes could be considered to replace if needed).

• GST is a regressive tax and is therefore completely unsuitable for a civilised society.
• The lie that the cost of GST equaled the lowering of income tax rates means nothing as time goes on and there is any negative disparity of salary and wage rises/changes and inflation. And this is what has happened, wages have not risen with inflation so it is not equal.
• GST undermines New Zealand businesses when competing with online overseas firms, for New Zealand purchasers. This especially impacts small New Zealand businesses. Overseas companies may or may not comply with our GST tax rules, and audit of overseas companies is a huge burden (it is questionable whether we even do it).
• GST runs counter to Keynesian economics as it suppresses demand from the poorest groups who spend all their money in the domestic economy and stimulate it. Taxation should be directed to the wealthiest people in society as the purpose of tax is redistribution. Recent history of stimulus payments (Japan to halt deflation, the US 2008 bank bailouts, and the US Trump budgets cuts) all gave stimulus to large businesses which tended to save the money or push it into their own stock prices, which did not stimulate the economy or make the lives of its citizens less harsh.  These are repeated demonstrations of the ineffectiveness of pushing money into the supply side of the economy. Wants and needs are not being met but share prices have been sustained. We have witnessed the misapplication of Keynesian policies to deliver corporate welfare. The large business community is simply not that strong and effective at supplying wants and needs. We can all see this in our communities.
• GST has a lot of complexity in making time-consuming and finicky adjustments for private use of assets and on disposal of assets when the business is ceasing.   It is easy to make mistakes and misunderstand what is required. By comparison an income tax on what has ‘come in’ without adjusting for capital/revenue or expenses is much easier. With this reset and no GST business people/owners particularly small owners would be primarily focused on running their business.
• The concept of taxation on consumer consumption may appeal to some people who want a less wasteful world, but GST does nothing to determine what is or isn’t consumed or the efficiency of its production.
• GST is misnamed. It is actually a tax on salary and wage income collected through the mechanism of people’s purchases. Unfairness arises as some wealthy people get their business or company to own all their assets.  So a person can rent their house, their car, all their costs to run the house etc so that these can become costs for the business and GST is collected back through the business. Particularly if owned through a sequence of companies that link back to overseas companies possibly in a tax haven. And their own rent is in effect paid back to them as the beneficial owner. So all the GST from running the ‘business’ is ultimately recoverable to the beneficial individual.
• GST is a fundamentally unfair tax as it is primarily paid by salary and wage earners when it is supposed to be paid by all final consumers.    
• GST is structured by zero rating to subsidise products for overseas consumers. This is damaging.  See item D in ‘What are the main impacts from this reset?’ below.
• GST is conceptually flawed and failing for all the above reason.

6. Tax evasion (tax avoidance is in part dealt with by the above proposals) becomes fully supported by the New Zealand Police – financial intelligence unit.

• Tax evasion is one of the most serious threats to the health of our society and therefore to our democracy.
• The current growth of populist leaders is linked to the instability created by inequality which is in part driven by tax avoidance and evasion. Tax evasion must be taken very seriously and aggressively pursued, and any tax investigation work should be at least fully engaged with the New Zealand Police – financial intelligence unit. A threat of surveillance and criminality will be very sobering to the tax behaviour of the business community.

Summary of the six points

All these proposals are within the existing economic and tax structure and mostly only require simple changes to the existing rules. They are low cost to administer as there are fewer exceptions so fewer rules.  Accounting rules would remain as they are. It is just tax rules that would change to focus on income only.

Transparency on the amount of tax paid

To support these changes private companies should be required to make public the income aspects of their accounts so a competitor who might be aware of what work is being done by that firm, could then assist or tipoff Inland Revenue if there is not compliance.   

A non-individual’s contributions via tax to society should be celebrated and perhaps this should be available to the public. The purpose of entities within an economy is to create supply to meet demands for wants and needs and the supply of tax is part of that process so why should it be hidden, which was the previous assumption. Lack of transparency has not been helpful for combating tax evasion.

The seven principles guiding my reset changes above are:

• Tax will be seen as just a cost of business, like any other cost that can’t be evaded.
  • These proposals do not completely erase tax avoidance but they go a very long way to doing that. Avoidance in future would primarily be about saying things aren’t income or the value of the income is not as much. There are other avoidance techniques like hiding ownership to pay a lower rate of tax. This is discussed a little more in Part C of this series.   
• A level playing field for small and large businesses with a clearer focus on what they should be doing i.e. – providing goods and services (Including innovation and exports) not cost accrual competition.
• Better economic outcomes for consumers and local businesses.
• Simpler voluntary compliance.
• Low administration cost.
• Lower environmental costs.

What are the main impacts from this reset?

A. Businesses with a high cost structure would have to reflect these in the prices they charge to consumers and/or amend their expectations on a return from capital.

B. Businesses with a low cost structure would become very competitive in the provision of goods and services (competition would help temper the above price increases).

C. There would be an initial burst of inflation.

• We had to deal with the same situation on the introduction of GST. We currently have to deal with inflation for building materials and housing – it is a problem that exists regardless of the tax situation and it should not make us afraid of a necessary tax reset. But to deal with inflation –
  • The removal of GST would assist at keeping inflation lower for consumers.
  • Tax on gross income gives more income to the government to support beneficiaries/people in need, to counter negative impacts from inflation.
  • Tax on gross income could allow a government to consider lower tax rates for individuals. But tax is already so low it is damaging society. A new consensus needs to emerge, that the collection of tax helps the economy and is an asset for business.
  • A risk of runaway inflation needs to countered, i.e. some firms might ramp up prices to take short term economic revenge to try and return the status quo.

The government could partnership with a New Zealand company, or preferably go it alone, to have a supermarket facility to stock essentials or a range of goods. The government would fund the basic wholesale price using economy of scale purchases and then that preferred retailer or their own organisation would sell with only a 1% or 2% commission on those goods, and the government gets its money back on the wholesale sales (less some sale costs). Or

a percentage of expenses is able to be deducted. Like with property and interest deductibility. Only 75% allowed to deduct this year; then 50%; then 25%. This is not a good option as there is likely to be a rush to buy which might push up inflation.

• But inflation may not be as high as feared as some expenses are not hard cash costs, e.g depreciation, so there would not actually be a dollar for dollar rise in prices.
• Also large high cost structure businesses would have to drive down their spending plans and shift their business model to a low cost one. Business demand would drop off. This should keep inflation down. With the supply chain problem at the moment, that drop in business demand could push inflation down or steady it. It is the perfect time for a reset to occur.
• Also see point F below. If there are less steps between producer and consumer then there is less chance for inflation.

D. Our exports would cost more.

• This would create the correct incentive for New Zealand to add value to its products before export; creating jobs and innovation opportunities (e.g. in science, medicine, engineering) in New Zealand.
• For example, milk powder auctions. In the reset, production costs are now fully carried by the producer and not socialised to the taxpayer. To try and increase their revenue they are more likely to innovate to increase the return on their product, or go into vertical integration to access parts of the value add chain.
• Products sold by contract, for example, logs to China – our logs would cost more and they may – pay the high price, buy less, or not buy. If they don’t buy then we simply do not have a product that is worth selling. We would have to change that log/product using innovation, science and/or manufacturing, into something people did want to buy. Or move into something else.
• And there are Research and Development tax credits available to support innovation and they would continue to be available. (But I suspect a perverse situation will arise of getting R&D credits whatever the research. Perhaps the money for R&D is better spent by directly allocating more money to places like Crown Research institutes or tertiary institutions).
• In a sale negotiation a producer is aware of what a ‘profit’ will mean for them. Removing deductibility of expenses simply changes the base line for what that profit is. This happens now for any increase in cost.
• With the current tax system allowing costs to be socialised, it makes New Zealand taxpayers subsidise products for the benefit of overseas purchasers. It is creating an externality of some of the cost of production which sends the wrong signal about the use of resources and this is bad for the environment and economy.
• This creation of an externality is exacerbated by GST zero rating for exports (This is done so our goods remain more price competitive! The principle is the goods are not consumed in New Zealand so there is no GST but all the costs of production are deductible for GST).  So all the services that went into supporting that export; education of people/employees, health services to look after people in the business, the courts that enforce laws that make doing business possible within New Zealand – al those costs of running a society are excluded from the cost price by the exclusion of GST to help fund them. Again the New Zealand taxpayer is being asked to subsidise the cost of goods and services supplied to overseas purchasers by having a reduced tax take. Yes the seller will return income from the sale and pay income tax (maybe) but those taxes are now too low. Using current tax system terminology; it is not income to the nation without taking account of the cost of production. This is just another reason GST is a terrible tax and should be dumped.
• Producers when negotiating a sale must have all the costs that contributed to that good or service in that cost price so the negotiation is real. Removing the impact of taxation and the services it supports is subsidising the sale.
• These reasons show that every country in the world would be doing the environment and their taxpayers/people a favour by moving to the reset changes here.

E. Speculative investments would become more risky.

• A traditional corporate raider might buy a company but as the cost to purchase is not deductible, each gross sale of the assets they strip off would be fully taxable. Tax on the sale of each asset could be more than the collective net profit.
• This is an important shift in the economy away from rewarding lazy asset stripping practises to businesses having to actually work and produce something to make their money.
• It would also take the pressure off prudent boards of directors who want to be cautious and careful and hold assets for a rainy day. These values/skills need to be protected as well as the push for innovation and value add, but not just asset stripping.   
• If a company decided to buy another company but shortly after they changed their mind. That is a risk they had to calculate before they made the purchase as the sale will be taxable with no expense offset of the purchase price.  This fact could pull down the number of potential  purchasers which in turn could pull down the purchase price of businesses. And that may not be a bad thing because so many owners sell up for the capital gain and an easy life. Sales are often to overseas investors – who then turn the purchase price into effectively a loan to the business with the interest being tax deductible (subject to Thin Cap rules) and the loan repayments capital. So the choice to sell up would not be incentivised or rewarded with no tax as what happens now.

F. Middle men get squeezed

• The more sale and purchases between production and the final consumer the more the product will cost and the greater the amount of tax paid. This creates an incentive to have as few steps as possible between producer and consumer. Currently these middle steps layer in cost for the consumer as each step must make a profit for the function they fulfil. With the new rules the fewer the steps the greater your competitive advantage and the incentive to provide a cheaper product to the customer.
• Under this reset a local producer would correctly have the natural advantage of dealing directly with the local consumer. Somebody coming from elsewhere must have a special advantage (a quality or price) to undercut the local. A natural ‘green economic’ advantage will apply of supporting local production.  Farmers markets would become even stronger by being price competitive.
• Existing business can adapt and achieve fewer steps by:
  • Vertical integration – through different divisions of a large company instead of selling through separate companies or by using wholesalers.  Perhaps supermarkets are close to this already?
  • Producers being more online and visible online to skip any wholesale or retail outlet steps.
  • Producers cooperating more and forming into physical or online markets, geographic online markets for easy delivery. The delivery person may be in partnership with producers?  It will be clear business people will be avoiding intermediate sales (to reduce tax impact on the final consumer)  by co-operating rather than sale transactions.  Charging for service but not buying the product themselves.
  • It is possible that dairies or private stores could become collection or distribution points for goods purchased?
  • Being physically closer to their market.
• Supermarkets may have to reimagine themselves if producers band together to create virtual supermarkets. I can only speculate how these powerful supermarkets will react but they will be threatened by change as they have a high cost structure based on palaces in which to sell goods; unlike the less glamorous stores they once were.

G. Investment opportunities

• Investment opportunities (to start small businesses) would open up across the New Zealand economy especially in retail and hospitality because the big boys with high cost structures would not have the competitive advantages they currently get from ‘the normal principles of taxation’.
  • Opportunities are likely to be with New Zealand based business who own their own premises or who can work from home, so are more community based. Many are potentially more artisan, e.g. artisan bread would be more price competitive with supermarket bakeries.  Or small New Zealand clothing designers will become more competitive as they don’t have the high cost structure of central city retail stores (clothes produced overseas may still have cheaper costs but now the freight and retail costs will be fully reflected in the retail price allowing a New Zealand manufacturer to be more competitive).
• Further support of domestic production would be needed such as requiring certifications that goods imported are:
  • recyclable, and there is a system in place to do it,
  • made in a factory with people receiving a living wage in their nation,
  • made in a way that is minimising damage to the environment or at least meeting any New Zealand standards.
• Certifications are likely to be open and anybody can challenge one. So info on where and when a good is produced is on the certification. An NGO or competitor could check the certificate and a fine made or withdrawal of goods made with a tax penalty? Options can be looked at. If critical goods are not able to meet these standards, then imports could continue but an active search for alternatives should be started in New Zealand.
• If we did not require imported goods to meet certain standards then we are undermining our domestic production, our environment, and the lives of citizens elsewhere. We are also perpetuating the exploitive process and systems (like the normal principles of taxation) overseas that damage people and the environment.

H. Increased visibility of criminal activity?

• The proceeds of crime need to be laundered and often this is about pushing transactions through several entities to hide it. But if sale and purchase agreements go through here in New Zealand entities, then they will be subject to tax. Almost all other legitimate businesses will be trying to minimise transactions.
• I’m sure they will find ways to be criminals but in theory it could be easier to find criminality or more easily get tax if found.
• As the Pandora papers show, more work needs to be done and this reset is the simplest and most effective way to help.

I. High turnover low margin activities would have to change their model

• Another challenge is businesses that rely on quick buying and selling for turnover. This applies to most retail chains in New Zealand and they will need to adapt to the new competition that would come as their prices will rise.
• The sharemarket may need some form of exemption but it seems like an institution that is not performing its function of raising capital that well. An investigation of how well it works for the economy is overdue. It tends to value speed over thought and financial bubbles tend to rise and pop as if it’s a boiling pool more than a secure investment tool to support investment across the economy.
• If an exemption was to be given then there would have to be trade limitations or money would pour in to try and make capital gains without the hard work of building infrastructure and having investment ideas. I think an exemption is not a positive or constructive step for the economy as it would enhance the distortion of investing for wealth rather than producing something for wealth. Money is just following money to puff up the sharemarket.
• If there was no exemption then the volumes of trades would significantly reduce. The risk is investment could not move into new enterprises without a fear of taxation. Options need to be explored. e.g a short period of time on a regular basis (yearly, monthly?) when trades could be done with perhaps a transparent register of planned trades for that date. The register could close off two weeks before the period. But large trades have to be registered a month or more before the close off. This gives greater security to the sharemarket and less chance of panics or too many people rushing on to one stock. These are just some basic ideas. Many people love the speed and urgency of the market but investors being able to see clearly and in time who is intending to buy and sell a certain stock will create a more reflective and balanced analysis and commentary on what is happening and steps can be taken to fix problems. The urgency back in the 2008 sharemarket crash shows the current system is too vulnerable to collapse.
• It should also be explored and options developed on how else the ‘purpose’ of the sharemarket can be delivered or organised. It seems a very fragile framework to conduct investment in.  For example, there could be development funds set up for sectors of the economy – health, housing, education, roading etc. And people could invest into the fund or a project being run through the fund. Businesses could suggest projects or investments to be supported by each fund. The project or options would be assessed as to how well it would deliver the need that the fund is trying to support – investors could then chose where they wished to put their money. Businesses would compete for funding of their project. There is a lot of process to establish, but this would be a better way to marshal the investment strength of the state rather than the current sharemarket approach of ‘give us your money as we are big and doing well and we will find ways to invest your money’. This is just one option idea and needs more work. It just shows there are other ways of doing investment.
• With these development funds it is possible or likely that the sharemarket will just fade away into irrelevance, but if it works it will stay.
• The sharemarket is very much about the better known get the most investment as they are seen as more secure. Borrowing is often possible because of the share price, and debit financing is heavily driven by the tax advantages. This framework is a very blunt tool to stimulate production/supply of goods and services to meet wants and needs in the economy. The reset disrupts these assumptions because it removes the tax subsidy.  A company still has the complete right borrow and nothing is stopping them from doing it, excepts the risks involved. This raises the prospects of evolving new ways finance can be raised. So alternatives are about funds or companies projects that people or funds could invest in are one possible way to go. There could be a small business fund for start ups. Investment markets or ‘exhibitions’ could be a bigger feature where investors meet producers to pitch ideas and have demonstrations of product etc.   
• Ultimately capital regardless of anything I suggest or speculate here, will find a way to make money in the way they wish. Nothing is done here to stop that. It is just tax will not be available to subsidise it.

J. Large capital infrastructure projects

• Like they do now, they will struggle. There aren’t any oil refineries, aluminium smelters, or steel works lining up to move to New Zealand. Currently all large infrastructure work rely on significant government support to make them happen so we lose nothing by making expenses non deductible.
• The film industry is a political decision to support or not, like the America’s Cup. That situation just continues according to political choices like it always has. Remember by allowing expenses to be offset to income we reduce the tax collected so we the people in effect help pay for it. So it would be a more transparent process if it is clearly brought into the political sphere.  There are far more benefits for stopping the allowance of expenses than leaving it as it is.

K. Accounting Reactions

• There would be moves by accountants/businesses to have ‘gains’ moved out of entities and to individuals, and called a capital gain to the individual and not subject to tax. Rules would be needed so assets and gains stay within the businesses or are taxed to the individual, rather than just being ‘loaned’ to the business. There are many great simple ideas but here is not the space to discuss them it is just an area of work to fix a small potential tax loophole that some will try and stretch open.
• Valuations of items sold will be an issue. Perhaps items will be under valued to reduce the tax payable. So independent valuation if there was a dispute, or if a sale was between related parties.

L. Different sectors have different impacts

• Using the table in ‘Part E – Impact on various sectors in New Zealand from making a Reset’
• The table shows approximate impacts. It is impossible to tell how much each business could preserve/increase profit by cutting back expenditure. But the table indicates areas where inflation is more likely to be high as costs are so high. And as said before this is an appropriate price signal.
• The following are just some examples of how impacts would play out across some sectors of the economy. Statistics New Zealand ‘Annual enterprise survey: 2017 financial year (provisional)’.

My purpose here is just to be indicative of impacts. It is not required information or essential to my central points of the economic impacts. I’m using it to reinforce two points:

• Firstly – the argument that non-deductible expenditure would have very different impacts in different industries, ergo it may not work equally. My central point is – that there is different impact is true, but that is not bad. Every sector and business in a sector must pay its way under the reset. Under current rules one sector or business can be in loss to subsidise another sector or business which ultimately favours large firms. For example:
  • Mining. For all the cost involved to undertake the enterprise there appears very little reward. Only a 4.6%  return over the costs. Is this a good use of investment capital in New Zealand? Is that a better investment than elsewhere? The reset (no deductibility of expenses) forces the business to ask this essential question within new parameters, and by that process it means the state is asking the same question because the state will have its tax. The calculation is different to the current ‘normal principles of taxation’ which allow high costs to be a tool to bring down profit that makes the basic product seem lower cost. e.g. In a vertically integrated company to use the costs to make the mining output a low cost input to their business where value is added later. In effect it encourages the exploitation of the resource rather than the recycling of it. Mining is expensive, and taxing the gross income will ensure it is seen as such. A logical consequence is that the recycling of resources already mined will become more attractive and built into the life cycle of the product e.g. a better collection process for products at the end of life. Royalties can stay as they are or be adapted and work can be done on this.
  • Wholesale trade. 4.2% return over costs. I have already explained under the heading ‘The middle men get squeezed’ that this sector will probably have to be specialist to survive or focus on imports. They will have to adapt as the shorter the gap from producer to consumer the lower the cost. This will encourage domestic production to keep that gap short. Exports will be more focused on higher value or value add products. So a high cost forces the wholesaler to more intensively ask ‘is this a good use of investment capital’. If there are shortages the price of a good goes up then the answer is yes. If there are no domestic competitors then the same answer. But if there are domestic competitors, that part of the trade may not be as profitable.
  • Financial services. 56.9% income over costs. They can pay the tax on gross income. How they fund that is covered under the discussion on inflation. There should be a reduction in debt financing demand (‘interest’ on loans no longer being deductible) so for their services they may not be able to put up their costs hugely.   
• Secondly – The argument that higher costs is not proof of being inefficient.
  • Again true and I have dealt with this under the heading ‘They punish innovation or the efficient use of resources’. ‘The normal principles of taxation’ in the tax system currently can’t identify efficiency therefore it allows inefficiency to hide and be subsidised. The reset by contrast exposes the inefficient to the risk taker, the business entrepreneur. This must be a good thing to the economy because the person concerned is now accountable for the inefficiency.
  • If the good or service is efficient then the higher price needs to be paid. A high price could encourage innovation to find a way to avoid the high price.

M. Miscellaneous points

• • Another possible avoidance technique is pricing. e.g. Papua New Guinea with its mines could collect a lot more revenue if tax is based on gross income but it would still face the issue of whether the ore being mined is properly priced before it is on-sold for refining. Does New Zealand face this issue in any trades or products? Transfer pricing is a world wide problem and the removal of expense deductibility will go some way to fixing but not so in some industries where there is strong vertical integration.
  • Drawings must become taxable to the receiver when received. And they would have to go through the IR payroll systems in order to get a deduction recorded. The argument that income goes up and down for new business is based on a truism but is a red herring. If you can take the money for a drawing it was there. Just take it as salary/wage. There are no tax losses now so there is no reason to have drawings in case the business is in loss. If the business is in accounting loss well if you took money you must pay tax on it as it is coming out of the business. The business must pay its way.

Planning for change.

• In all cases prices would need to be looked at, costs and expectations of the return on capital reviewed, business viability, just like it is done currently for any good or service that is provided when costs rise.

• As stated before there will be a spike in inflation and there are actions that can be taken. If inflation was excessive then that will allow competitors to come in and bring prices down. We have had this before with tax changes like the introduction of GST. The government should be on the look out to take action to protect the economy and have a plan A and B etc. There are many ideas about how to control this, or a transition to change.  More work needs to done on the very difficult issues of price setting and inflation and I hope to write on it.

A positive change for good business and fair competition

• Businesses need to see these six changes not as an existential crisis but as a strategic shift in the economy back to them being focused on delivering quality goods and services to customers in the most efficient way possible. Rather than in many cases having a profit (turnover) focus foremost. Quality and service should be the path to profit.

Further benefits of a reset of the normal principles of taxation

A greener economic system and society?

• Without the ability to deduct costs, all costs become a dead cost in the financial accounts. A business will become even more cost adverse leading to a less wasteful approach to resources. Then a greener society has more chance of organically arising. (No longer will there be an effective 28% reduction in price through tax being claimable).
• With a shift in competitiveness the current business slide into overseas franchises (with all the risks of profits and investment capital going to overseas owners) may be slowed or halted . If smaller New Zealand businesses pick up there may be less need to carry product around the world to satisfy demand here.
• If goods cost more, there is an incentive to buy quality so they last longer and lead to less waste and needless turnover.
• More indigenous production can lead to lower cost production. More chance of a business looking for recyclable materials here or low cost local inputs. The idea of just import to fill a need or gap would reduce because price is the natural inhibitor to that.
• More smaller businesses would mean more looking for local opportunities to develop and expand. Our local economy could be more dynamic.
• But a greener more environmentally sustainable economy needs more than this hope to make it actually happen. The reset advocated here gives a foundation for sustainability that can be more easily built on than our current tax economic foundation.
• I do not intend to glamorise small business. It still needs to be held accountable for health and safety, for employee rights. It can be less skilled and therefore less professional, less able to stay up to date. They would need support, training e.g. co-operatives with courses or conferences to keep skills levels up. Maybe circulating staff between different shops to learn and gain experience to bring back. There are options needed that are more than just changing the tax system.

Urban housing impacts

• There would be an initial move away by businesses from high cost areas, (central cities and malls) to a more diffuse locating of services closer to communities where services are needed but costs are lower. The existing businesses (the high cost structure ones) reaction to counter this is likely to be by bringing the people to the centres or the malls so the people are co-located with their goods and services. So we could see very large high rises beside or over the existing sites of malls or central cities. The people come down their lifts and into large shopping areas or malls. Again this would reduce transport needs, pollution and the endless road building focus.  It would allow people to live within the central city or hubs, rather than the current endless urban sprawl (with costly infrastructure spends) that destroys quality farm land and necessitates lots of commuting with hours of wasted life in traffic.
• If the private sector did not react in this way, then these mall or central city sites would be available for government to lead development of urban housing intensification. Intensification I perceive is a government objective and more desirable for people.
• If this hub and centre model is properly urban planned and built with a focus on quality, not primarily profit, this would allow preservation of character features of New Zealand cities (gardens, trees, historic houses, other features like parks and greenbelts).  If you just intensify based on a private enterprise ownership model alone you will get the endless concrete urban sprawl seen in every third world city where without regulation private enterprise rules.

Tax Administration

• The accounting and tax compliance burdens on small business would be significantly reduced as they would only need to think about what their income was and the tax % that would apply. Good business practice would still require proper accounts to be kept. Arrangements could be made with banks to collect the tax money from deposits into bank accounts of non-individuals?  (Bank transfers between fully related entities would be taxable unless expressly exempt. Each separate legal entity will be treated as independent. Transfers between different parts of the same one legal company, that is registered and based in New Zealand would not be taxable. But perhaps work needs to be done to make sure there is no twisting of status to bring advantage. A rule could be that if limited liability exists for a separate ‘unit’ there it is separate and tax applies. This is a precaution idea to stop avoidance).    

Future possibilities

• And if there is no reduction in overseas franchises and a green society does not arise? These six changes still mean New Zealand will collect more tax from businesses to grow our society. It will be harder for overseas parent firms to shift profit out of New Zealand without paying tax on it. Yes, evasion will shift to what is income but a wide definition will be harder to avoid. And over time if tax rates rise so will the level of tax collected, so the costs of these businesses will rise. Eventually a tipping point may be reached and local production will be competitive.

Summary

The New Zealand economy is being given the wrong economic signals by ‘the normal principles of taxation’.

• They undermine the comparative advantage of low cost firms and favour large firms which reduces competition and leads to monopoly capitalism.
• They undermine taxation which means support services for the business to function within are not as effectual because they are underfunded. They make redistribution of income less effective which means domestic demand for goods and services from businesses is lower than it should be, which inhibits wealth creation in the economy.
• They socialise risk taking onto the ordinary taxpayers and government with no choice in the risk.
• They punish efficient low cost businesses making the same good or service as another company, by making the efficient pay more tax.
• They create an externality through forcing all taxpayers to subsidise environmentally damaging practises or activities. And sometimes without any reward for that subsidy.

Because of these signals we have watched for years our domestic economy slowly and surely slip away from smaller New Zealand businesses and slide into franchise.  Yes, the failed neo liberal experiment has exacerbated the problems but ‘the normal principles of taxation’ have been a problem for a very long time and they have fuelled the growth of tax havens.  Defenders of the principles argue their fairness and coherence is in treating all business the same without favour. But that is simply not true, they ignore the field (the principles) that is heavily sloped to one side. One side, the small business side, can’t access the advantages like the other. High cost business structures are able to be sustained by large capital accumulations which means ‘the normal principles of taxation’ roll the economy to monopoly capitalism and squeeze everyone else out.

The reset here will make the New Zealand private sector both more adaptive and responsive to domestic demand, and more serious about innovating and exporting for wealth gain. These changes reinforce the need for government to have a strong influence and role in meeting the demands of society. And a key part in that is for businesses to pay tax for wealth redistribution so money is circulated to sustain demand and economic activity within a society to meet the needs of the people.

Without wealth spread across lots of people and ultimately into smaller businesses that ultimately can grow into larger ones, the ability of New Zealand to grow wealth will be undermined. People will just be the manager of the overseas franchise, or the employee in the low wage job of a large corporation.

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PART C – Creating the citizen economy

The Pandora papers repeatedly show a wealthy person hiding their ownership of assets, because ownership is important for taxation. Why?

• There are two types of rules to establish whether an activity should be taxed in New Zealand or not.
  • The source rules – income is earned in some way in New Zealand so it is taxed here.  E.g. a resident of another country like, the United Sates, might visit and work here for two weeks and that two weeks of income is taxed in here. But if they also got rental income or something back in the United States, that is not sourced here so it is not taxed here. And the person has not become a New Zealand resident.
  • The residency rules – a tax resident of New Zealand is taxed on all their income from around the world.

• So if a company/legal entity is registered overseas and holds assets overseas the source rules and the residency rules do not apply. However through a string of companies/legal entities that ownership may be traced back to a beneficial owner who is resident in New Zealand and therefore under both the residency and source rules the income from those assets should be taxed in New Zealand.
  • For example, a New Zealand resident owns a property overseas and they rent it out – it is taxable in New Zealand under the residency rules. But if a company or trust owns the property and then it links to a series of shell companies and trusts set up in tax havens, the beneficial owner is hidden and technically the New Zealand person can claim they don’t own the property.  The rental income is therefore not returned as taxable in New Zealand [Or if the rental property is in New Zealand then it is caught by the source rules and taxed here and this is where cost accrual competition is used to minimise tax].

• • But wait there’s more, if that tax haven company holding the overseas rental property sets up a loan agreement between it and another one of those related tax haven entities, and they then turn that rental income into a loan that they make back to the New Zealand resident, the ‘beneficial owner’. That resident can then receive the money as capital which is not subject to tax. And of course back in the tax haven there will be some provision that the loan will be written off in some circumstance, like a sale. And ‘interest’ on that ‘fake’ loan is deductible here in New Zealand if that loan is said to be for a business trading in New Zealand, or for the trading of shares in New Zealand. So less tax is collected in New Zealand from income generated here.

• We think of borrowing being about providing a company with resources to grow a business to create opportunities and grow the economy. We are all wealthier from this economic growth. But these assumptions no longer apply.

• Debit financing is an epidemic in New Zealand that is built on the foundation of the ‘normal principles of taxation’ giving the ability to deduct interest on loans, and reducing tax that could be paid in New Zealand. Debt often reflects a choice by the entrepreneur to structure an arrangement to minimise tax.  The positive micro economic effect for the business (less tax paid) is outweighed by the negative macro effect on the economy and our society (less redistribution and stimulus to the economy). Interest deductibility has become a poison to the economy inhibiting growth by reducing tax redistribution.

• This reset by removing the ability to deduct costs which includes interest on a loan will at least stop that aspect of tax avoidance.   And for the claim that removing interest deductibility is to impede the honest majority because of a few dishonest, is simply not true. The normal principles of taxation allow the dishonest to mimic the honest. And because dishonesty is allowed under the rules, the honest do not see it as dishonest. They have these practices modelled to them successfully and to compete, to maximise profit, you must follow the ‘best practices’. And the result is the six problems I outlined in Part A that show the principles are distorting the economy and damaging it.

No capital revenue distinction for a non-individual (capital is not taxed but revenue is)

• But the reset holds out further prospects to limit avoidance through the removal of a capital revenue distinction:
  • A reset can include a fake loan as an amount that ‘comes into’ the New Zealand company and therefore can be taxed as income. (But if the loan comes back to a ‘natural person’ the capital revenue distinction still applies). The reset means the definition of income can be used to shape the flow of capital in a positive way. e.g. to identify loans that are not income by – listing reputable entities that do not deal with tax havens, or specify that only approved New Zealand entities/banks can make loans. A reset can therefore lift the context in which honest business can safely and profitably operate, without a descent to a lowest common denominator of tax avoidance. Honest business practice would have a competitive advantage through taxation rather than vice versa. These are possibilities.

• A reset doesn’t stop all tax avoidance.
  • For example, a company based in a tax haven overseas may own a property in New Zealand.
    • A sale of that property by a non-individual should be subject to tax (not for a family home the beneficial owner lives in). Tax could be collected before a transfer of land title.
    • But if the company in the overseas tax haven that holds the property is sold to another company in the tax haven, the name of the registered owner in New Zealand does not change. There is no trigger for New Zealand to collect tax. (It is possible the two beneficial owners, the seller and the purchaser are both New Zealand residents but this is hidden in the tax haven).

• This shows it is difficult to collect this sort of income, or what some would call capital gain. If we just look at taxation there are two main ways to check people are complying and/or to collect tax.
  • Search for the beneficial owner information. ie. wait for secrecy to be lifted so that one day we might be able to dig through mountains of overseas information to find out who the beneficial owners are and then argue with them for years over how much tax should be paid. Clear simple and defined rules and exclusions would be easier and less costly to administer.
  • Use rewards and fear to undermine tax avoidance. A person who informs on another person over tax avoidance may get a percentage of any penalties. e.g. A beneficial owner in NZ has a series of companies and trusts in a tax haven that owns some properties in New Zealand. If they sell to anybody and try to avoid tax the purchaser is encouraged to inform New Zealand authorities. This makes tax avoidance a constant insecurity of looking over your shoulder. Any risk to business relationships become a financial risk.

• But there are more ways to deal with tax avoidance than just changing tax rules.
  • The overseas press in response to the Pandora papers reports talk of going after the enablers of tax avoidance. This can be done but it won’t get to the root cause, the structural processes, like the normal principles of taxation. A focus on enablers will not stop the profitability of tax avoidance so new enablers will continually arise like weeds, or like criminals willing to fight a war on drugs.

• • We need to look at the structure of companies/trusts and the legal powers we grant to them. The scope they can operate in and the functions they can fulfil are very broad. The context of the development of companies is in the age of piracy and colonial exploitation where there was a lack of concern for other peoples. Companies were designed to protect the wealth of people in the mother nation because some of the early crashes, like the South Sea Bubble, ruined a lot of wealthy people.  Also the East India Company was trying to work out how to organise itself to make as much money as possible with as little risk as possible.

• • As a consequence there are not many legal restraints or boundaries within the structures of companies.  They allow semi-anonymous behaviour, and like in social media, people can get very harsh and self focused when they feel anonymous. The authority given to a company to allow shareholders to avoid debt responsibilities is too wide. Reckless behaviour is advantaged and protected in a company with limited liability. Companies allow some individuals, the shareholders, to possess more rights than natural individuals, because companies are designed that way, and perhaps that is no longer good, if it ever was.  Restructuring the rights, scope and functions of a company is a more relevant and productive area to find fixes for tax avoidance than a focus on those who seek to use the existing structures to make money in.
  • For example, some ideas to investigate how to put constraints on companies:
    • how many layers of companies or trusts can exist before a beneficial owner is identified. For a non-public company (private) perhaps it is one? Only the names of the natural person beneficial owners may be listed.
    • all ownership should be public.
    • Details of an owners asset wealth is required to be declared and published.
    • What is a better limit to limited liability. Perhaps more must be at stake for an entrepreneur than the current bankruptcy rules allow? Perhaps the restriction on limited liability is ‘limited to a dollar figure? And all assets declared on beginning of an undertaking? Perhaps access to assets is removed?
    • The nature of the company must be declared. It’s trade, or a shell.
    • Tax paid
    • Assets required to be publicly listed.
  • These are just some ideas that can be explored as a way to set up boundaries of behaviour through transparency which will build better economic growth across our economy, and build a better society.

• The Netflix series ‘Squid Game’ follows an allegory of capitalism about what people will do, not by force and command, but by the context and options you place before them. The context we place our entrepreneurs in – with a series of tools (companies/trusts) without almost any boundaries, tax principles that encourage waste and minimisation of tax, and the provided goals of profit maximisation for personal gain; is not conducive to community (or the provisions of goods and services to satisfy wants and needs). Proof this is a true statement is the current housing affordability crisis; where is affordable supply?   But back to community, at our heart, as Aristotle said , ‘man is by nature a social animal’.   Our current tax system appears to be working against our best nature. 

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Part D – Beneficial impacts for all with no capital/revenue distinction and less tax minimisation.

• The objective of reset feature number 2, is to simplify taxation and so reduce the opportunity of tax avoidance through recharacterising something that is income into something that is capital and not taxed. Recharacterising for tax avoidance is gone with this Reset.
  • Some operational questions arise in not having a capital/revenue distinction.
  • A purchase by a company of inputs to produce something could be said to be ‘coming in’ as an asset or gain even though no money has come in, but only gone out. But in case some argue the assets ‘came in’ and they are therefore income and subject to tax, it needs to be clarified that it is not income. Purchase of physical production inputs are exempt, but of course any monies or value from disposals of them are taxable as income.
  • If a company purchases a valuable work of art, it has ‘come in’ but is that taxable as income or a gain? I say no. It could be the employer wanted a nice picture on the wall. But it is generally not a production asset. So if it was obtained or traded in exchange for some products/widgets the company normally sells then it clearly has a sense of being income and its value would be taxable. So a definition of income would have to say there must be some sort of reciprocity before what comes back in is taxable. Guidance on this from existing rules would be best and then strongly tightened to prevent avoidance activities. Of course any disposal of that art would be taxable income to the company because the art is owned by the company.
  • If a Risk Free rate of return method was used to assess gains then distinctions would have to be made for things traditionally seen as capital/revenue. There are examples to follow on how to do this.
  • Without a capital revenue distinction all disposals are income. It could be argued money is disposed of to purchase production inputs so that disposal is subject to tax. Of course it should not be, it’s just the converse of the situation above of production inputs but in relation to money. An exemption needs to be made for this specific situation.
  • If the company loans its parent company, its cash accumulation; that is a disposal of an asset and taxable. But what does it get back for the ‘sale’! Nothing! There is no good or service sold and no consideration to pay tax on. Incorrect – It gets the initial investment into the company. It is paying for that investment by making a distribution. Rather than taxing the investment we tax the amount on distribution. We are taxing the purpose of a making a distribution. A specifically permitted registered bank or exempted financial institution making a loan would be exempt as long as it is arms length, or to a 3rd party. 
• Two issues are raised by this: taxing twice, and it’s a loan to another entity!
  • Point One – taxing income twice. i.e. once when goods and services are provided by the company and payments for them are taxed as income, but also when the accumulated capital is taken/loaned to another entity and taxed as a disposal.
    • It is not actually taxing twice because it is being taxed for a different purpose. In this case the purpose of taxing the disposal is to discourage capital extraction from a profitable company. This is about the primary purpose of a company/non-individual, being to supply goods and services within the economy to meet wants and needs. Taxing the disposal occurs because company investment assets are being diverted to a secondary purpose, i.e. to be used as income for a narrow group of people, shareholders.
    • Another way to express the ‘purpose’ argument is that each legal entity is separate and has its own profit motive.  A company’s purpose to supply a good or service, and when it  delivers it, that is how it meets its profit motive.  The company purpose is not as is often stated to earn a profit for its shareholders.  This idea comes about due to a lack of intellectual separation between the profit motive of the company and the shareholders profit motive. Some shareholder will say we own the company and it will do as we say. But that position fails when we consider other separate legal entities, like employees, they have rights. e.g. an 8 hour day, sick leave. There is an understanding with natural persons and legal entities that they have an existence and purpose beyond ownership. If you want separate legal entities to run things then the reset tax outcome is that it holds the purpose separately to any shareholder purpose. Because of the over emphasis on the secondary purpose, think of example of the aged care home where money is pulled out for shareholders when it could be used to improve services and prices for users. We have to tax that secondary purpose in order to give a value to or push towards the first purpose. Which is the purpose that society primarily needs from that company. If the company doesn’t make a profit then it fails, but the reward for investors must follow the profit and primary purpose.
    • Also this has to be done because tax avoidance is out of control. Most disposals from a company are to other non-individuals rather than direct to natural person’s. If the disposal is not taxed, then this is still a huge benefit over a distribution that goes to a natural person where higher tax rates apply.
    • Taxation on disposal will also discourage shuffling money though multiple legal entities to hide ownership. Each step is taxed.  Tax avoidance/minimisation is linked to these practises.
    • Tax on disposal of an asset, a capital accumulation, will act like a progressive tax rate but only activated on disposal. It is simple to avoid if there is no disposal. This disposal tax rate could be set at a higher level than the rate when income is received.
    • Even if the loan to the parent company or another company is to fund another business activity and therefore to meet another want or need, it is still money being taken from a successful business that could be improving services or dropping prices. Therefore loans as profit extraction must be taxed. The government must take a further share of that investment success to stimulate the wider economy in which that new venture will be undertaken.
    • As noted before, investment capital is often diverted to activities that protect the company rather than work for the benefit of the wider economy. Tax should discourage cost accrual competition. And the inclusion of loans will assist in stopping inefficient spending on cost accrual competition.
    • To argue against this reset idea is to encourage inefficiency in the market. Or perhaps it is to make the case the market mechanism should not belong in some services or industries? i.e. you don’t want goods and services improved.
  • Point Two. ‘It’s a loan to another related entity and loans are not income and not taxable!’
    • And that is what makes them a tax avoidance risk. To prevent tax avoidance and for equality of treatment with any other disposal of a company asset. The value of the loan to another entity has to be taxable and not just the interest coming in.  See Part C where income can be turned into a loan to avoid tax. To not include a loan as a disposal and taxable would undermine the intent of creating a structure in which a business is encouraged to be more focused on delivery of quality goods and services.
    • Of course in a practical sense there will be little double taxation, if you call it that. This is because behaviour and structure will change.  The current business fragmentation into multiple entities will revert back to activities being business units in one company, so money is not moving between separate legal entities so there is no double tax.  But this behaviour change will bring the huge benefit of greater transparency of ownership and control in the economy. And that will help bring more accountability through potential liability. See Part C for a little more discussion on hiding ownership to create tax avoidance opportunities, and money laundering.  Of course there will be at least one taxing point on disposal when money leaves that bigger company.
    • With less companies, limited liability becomes more about contract negotiation rather than a hard reliance on legislative law, which currently allows the risk takers to avoid responsibility. e.g. Bankruptcy rules are a mockery of accountability.  Better business practises should arise with more accountability because there is more risk of liability.
    • This reset and structure change creates a risk the parent company based overseas will claim they just have a business unit in New Zealand and therefore any profit extraction is just moving money inside the overseas company. Therefore, an overseas parent company must be required to register a company in New Zealand to do their trading in New Zealand and all income must go through that New Zealand company and none of it direct to the parent. Assets must be held in a New Zealand entity. More work needs to be done on internet sales which is currently a problem anyway.
    • The payment of a dividend is also the disposal of a capital asset, the capital accumulation.  The tax on disposal at 10% could be treated differently. When a dividend is paid to:
      • a natural person, based in New Zealand, this tax could be recorded as a 10% withholding tax that they can claim as a credit on their personal tax return when establishing their personal tax liability. Overseas people raises issue with DTA’s that need to be looked at.
      • for a non-individual whether they are registered in New Zealand or overseas there is no withholding tax credit recorded. The tax is a final amount paid by the company paying the dividend.
    • This framework allows choice for a person on how to structure their finances. A New Zealand resident can choose to have an overseas company registered as the owner of the shares in the New Zealand company that is paying the dividend. So it is fully taxed when paid out and there is no withholding tax credit. But when that overseas company sends income back to New Zealand that is taxed in full when it arrives. Because it is caught by the wider definition of income and it came in, so each step is being taxed. This will help give some equity in how income is taxed when using different structures.   
    • If money stays in the non-individual entity it could be an encouragement for the business to pay its staff more because that expense is deductible. And this would improve transparency of financial reward for CEO’s etc. Shareholders would become more long term investors. Dividends paid would be taxed at a higher rate and as shareholders are primarily the very wealthy that is appropriate. Even if the funds are KiwiSaver and linked to salary and wage earners the potential for demand driven growth in the economy is enhanced by the greater tax increase.

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Part E – Impact on various sectors in New Zealand from making a Reset

Data is from the Statistics New Zealand website and the ‘Annual enterprise survey: 2017 financial year (provisional)’.

• A transport company if it earned $2.5M total income x 15% tax rate = $375,000.  Under the old rules $2.5M less costs $2.1M = $400,000 x 28% = $112,000. So an extra tax bill of $263,000 a year, or $21,916 a month, or $720 a day.  Prices would rise to cover the cost.
• A mining company $5.5M x 15% = $825,000 . Under the old rules – $5.5M less cost of $5.1M = $400,000 x 28% = $112,000 tax to pay. So an extra tax bill of $713,000 to pay a year, or $59,416 a month, or $1,953.42 a day. And this is appropriate for a high cost activity. Their costs should go up so it signals accurately to the economy the cost of this activity which sends a signal to find alternatives or to innovate to get round the cost. Not use the tax system to get round the high cost.
• A warehousing company with a low margin model will struggle. Any industry with this model will struggle. As set out before, these businesses are often interposing between producers and consumers. The less steps between these two the lower the cost of the good or service. That is an appropriate signal for the economy.
• The sectors that are short will have to raise prices if they can’t bring down their cost. If industries can bring down their cost they will increase their profit margins. They are then competing on a more level playing field with small businesses.  Even the sectors not short will have to consider price rises. GST is neutral for business as they don’t pay it, they just collect it for the government. But GST is not neutral for the final consumer so removal of GST will help consumers fund some small cost increases.

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can download supplementary material that supports this analysis. Please download this PDF that includes: Part A, Part B, Part C, Part D, Part E.

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SPECIAL REPORT AND ANALYSIS – by Stephen Minto.

Housing affordability is more than a simple case of demand and supply; there are structural factors creating too much investor demand for residential housing.  Because of this, New Zealand can’t just build its way out of this crisis. And removing planning restrictions will delay intensification and the supply of affordable housing, the exact opposite of what its proponents claim. The structural forces, in which the property market functions, must be fixed.

To see this we need to understand three things:

1. How we got here, and where here is.
2. Our current trends and economic forces.
3. What direction do we want to go in and how (possible solutions).

Part 1: How we got to this crisis – the NZ economy is a one trick pony; residential housing

We all know:

• The ‘normal principles of taxation’ favour holding a relatively low-effort, non-productive asset – residential property. Especially because you could claim the mortgage interest paid as an expense.
• There was no capital gains tax.
• The banks want to lend on leveraged property as a relatively secure loan. They are risk adverse.
• You can have a holiday home and rent it out occasionally as a pretend business to subsidise having it.
• Huge tourism to New Zealand along with AirBNB and ‘bookabach’ etc have given a lucrative income stream in the short-term rental market.
• Mum and dad savers/investors learnt from the 1987, 1998, and 2008 economic crashes that property was the best at retaining its value.
• The renters pay your mortgage, so there is little drain on your ‘income’ or there is positive enhancement from rental losses.
• New Zealand has had positive migration flows.

All these factors have been in place for many years making residential housing a fantastic investment, or superannuation scheme, or wealth–gain mechanism. It’s not clever to invest in residential property, it’s stupid not to.

But wait there’s more – the neo-liberal economic crisis

Commentators don’t talk about the neo-liberal structural changes in New Zealand and other first world economies from 1980 that have collapsed alternative investment opportunities.

The world economy was opened up on the mistaken belief that the great growth years of capitalism were made in an environment of little regulation and tax. A mantra to free up the private suppliers of goods and services (supply side economics) from laws, labour, and taxes was said to lead to an economic boom.

We all know there has been no boom for working or middle class people. There has been a boom for financial capitalism, technology, and billionaires.

What happened was skilled manufacturing and industrial jobs were exported to countries like China, Vietnam, and India. Many high income jobs evaporated in New Zealand leading to fewer people being able to save house deposits or save capital to start a business. Yes we got lower cost imports to match lower incomes, but we also got a throw away society with so much rubbish brought in.

Also, lower taxes and a smaller government meant the main source of apprenticeships, from Ministry of Works, Railways, Defence etc., dried up, leaving New Zealand small businesses without a source of trained and qualified people. They now had  to pay to train them. We now have to import skilled people. We have fewer skilled people to build houses. Fewer apprenticeships means fewer people to set up their own businesses meaning fewer opportunities for those wanting to strike out on their own. Fewer new businesses means fewer medium-sized businesses, which could be an investment option for those wanting to invest.

The above reality is compounded due to the absence of a capital gains tax as business owners have an incentive to take an easy-life option and sell up to overseas buyers. These overseas owners contribute tax and labour costs but they often do their best to avoid these. Businesses listed on the sharemarket are often sold overseas and pulled out of our sharemarket. We now have a thin share market. Profits from New Zealand assets are exported overseas. Most investment capital is not being invested back into growing the New Zealand economy, instead huge amounts of New Zealand’s investment capital is going to non-productive assets, such as residential property. These are all structural problems significantly damaging the ability of the New Zealand economy to grow.

New Zealand is now a service based economy but business set-ups in New Zealand are often for overseas franchises with low margins and wages. In fast food our small shop owners struggle. Retail as a business model is struggling because consumers have less disposable income because of high rents. High rents, and other utilities like power, suck money out of other areas of the economy. Our overall economy is being damaged by being skewed to the non-productive asset, residential property.

This is where the New Zealand economy is today; there is almost nowhere in New Zealand to invest except in residential property. Neo-liberal policies have shrunk our domestic economy and removed opportunities for investment. Entrepreneurs are risk averse – they minimise risk and buy property.

Is there a property bubble?

Yes. High house prices mean loans are beyond the ability of borrowers to ever repay. But that is still profitable for banks. The loans help push house prices higher, which rewards investment in property, and so it continues. But like the 25 July 2021 Radio NZ article ‘The problem with economists forecasts’, many have predicted a bubble burst but all have failed. Why? It’s obvious. The structural problems and incentives to buy residential housing are all still in place. Where else can the investors go? The economic signals from a dysfunctional economy trap investors in residential property. (ref. Radio New Zealand; July 25, 2021)

The property bubble can’t deflate until there is a functioning economy with alternative low-risk options for investment.

There are ways out of this, which is covered in Part 4 of this four part series.

Part 2: The current trends and economic forces shaping housing affordability

New Zealand can’t just build its way out of the affordable housing crisis. Previously I noted the ‘normal principles of taxation’ and the legacy of the neo-liberal experiment are skewing the economy to trap investors into holding residential housing as investments.  This part looks at the recent developing economic trends that now trap middle and working class people into renting for life and why that is bad for our economy.

Trends – big business residential renting

The New Zealand situation sits along with a trend in the United States where large corporations, e.g. the Koch brothers, have been investing in new rental properties because the returns on rentals are so strong. This is because house prices in the US, like NZ, are high. This shuts out most young middle- and working-class buyers. These people then become a captive market of renters as they are wealthy enough to pay high rents. And the high rents in turn make it almost impossible for renters to save a deposit to buy a home, and the captivity continues. The returns and prospects for business are great.

Over time, the rental investor market is moving away from mum and dad investors as they surrender their houses to pay for retirement homes or to release capital to live comfortably. Big business will take up a lot of that divestment; they can leverage far more and so are able to pay and sustain high prices for residential houses. They will also be buyers of older homes to redevelop into more ‘productive’ new builds. Banks will feel secure to lend to a large business with captive renters.

This means the future of housing is evolving into a big business ‘build to rent’ model, which means not ‘generation rent’ but ‘generations of rent’.

And this is bad for the economy. One of the ways it is bad is it leaves people with little capital to borrow against to take up a business option. It traps people as employees. And people renting won’t be able to build equity because there are fewer other investments options and those other options aren’t performing as well as residential property because all the investment capital to grow those other options is being sucked into residential property. And the chances of saving to build equity are low because rents are high. More reasons are given in the next trend (see below).

Some governments have also undermined social housing, which has exacerbated the problem, but that failure did not create the affordable housing crisis.

At this point, some people who own lots of properties will say, ‘So what?’

• Nothing is wrong with people renting.
• Nothing is wrong with high rent if the market is willing to pay it.
• The critics are all anti-business.

My response is this:

• Yes, it is wrong if there is no choice.
• People are not willing to pay high rents – they have to pay them.
• Redirecting investment to the productive economy (exports, innovation, producing goods and services) is good for business.

All businesses will benefit from a shift to investment in the productive economy except the types of business based on highly leveraged rental property. The property investor landlords that are not based on highly leveraged property will carry on renting.

Trends – high price houses and rents are here to stay.

In theory, increasing housing supply will bring down house prices, but that is not so in the economy we have.

For renters, the high prices paid for housing purchases are used to justify charging high rents. Also, big business is very keen on making sure there is a good rate of return on capital, so there’s an incentive to keep rents high.

Supply of housing and the rental price is not really linked. Pricing is about how much ‘consumer surplus’ the seller believes they can extract. It is not about the costs of the business so much as what they think the renter can pay e.g. linked to area, what others are charging in that area for that size of house. What the renter thinks the rent should be is not really relevant. Business costs do not really matter for price e.g. as a landlord pays down their mortgage on a rental property they do not reduce the rent on the property. Cost and supply do not drive rent prices.

The easiest example to see how supply and price is not linked is the car market (used and new). There are a huge number of cars in New Zealand and it is presented to the consumer as a myriad of choices about car style and performance, ‘why do you want the car?’. Each choice means it becomes a smaller range of cars to choose from. Every ‘extra’ feature is a way to distinguish one car from the hundreds of other cars; to push price up, or help hold it up.  This is what will happen with the housing market. The business model market will have a deliberate desire to push choice and variety up to push, or keep, the price up.

So for the ‘build to rent’ business model we will see tiny studio apartments marketed as the affordable option, which really primarily just suits a very young guy on his own, or short-term stays. As the size increases it will exponentially get more expensive. The business model will run that tried and true for-profit strategy. They will start organising your loans to make the purchase so they can get a commission.

Supply is only one of the many factors (e.g. location, quality, number of rooms), to set a rental price. Too many people are talking as if supply will fix the problem of affordability and this is a mistake. For example, a ‘tradie’ did a job at a rental house (almost $700 a week for a whole house in an outer suburb) there were several people home (a Polynesian extended family) and the rental owner, in casual conversation with the tradie, said as there were more people in the house than they thought, they would raise the rent, i.e. they can charge more. This is an insight to price setting. The idea, that people can just go somewhere else if rents rise, is silly. People want continuity with where they live, especially if they have children at schools. Also, demand to rent a property would generally be seen as inelastic, i.e. you need a place to live so you have to pay what is asked for. If you negotiate a rent reduction it tends to be by quite small amounts. (I’m sure there are anecdotes of some large reductions but clearly that is not the norm from the Trade me site or as renters report).

This shows cost, and supply, is not what primarily drives rent prices and this business model will work counter to the government’s, and most voters’ objectives, of ensuring there is affordable housing for our families, children and grandchildren.

Trend – a business ownership model versus a home ownership model

Residential housing is currently being repurposed into a very strong and profitable business model either with long term renting, or short term renting (Airbnb, book a bach etc) for tourism – when tourism returns – the previous model being high levels of home ownership. These business models will further push out home buyers unless they can pay a very high price. Therefore an affordable housing shortage will persist due to New Zealand’s lack of building resource capacity and a positive net migration. This is the nature of the private market and it has already shown it can’t deliver affordable housing. It needs a push, and help, to deliver affordable housing.

With a move to big business running more rentals, the chances of rents being lowered by supply are slimmer than if it was lots of mum and dads running the rental market. A large business will hold many properties and can carry empty property more easily as tax deductions can still be made against the property. High rents on some properties can cover for vacant periods on other properties.

Also the concept of ‘affordable’ is a monetary concept but housing is a qualitative experience. The economic/profit drive for business will be what is market ‘affordable‘ – e.g. those apartments that are south facing and that do not get any direct light, or they look onto a concrete wall. More planning rather than less will be needed to avoid these sort of outcomes.

The private rental market is not conducive to lower rents. For example, one rental comes onto the market and the fact that 10 or 100 people applied for that one new flat is taken as a signal to all the other people holding rentals (with that rental service company) to raise the prices on their other rentals. The private market tends to quickly inflate the impacts of scarcity. But when one rental takes a long time to rent there is no rush to drop their prices on their other rental properties. Private markets tend to hold prices high. So housing supply, if held in the private business model market, will not necessarily bring down rental prices. Anecdotally, I am personally aware of many houses in New Zealand’s capital city Wellington, that are not occupied. Ideally, this housing stock would be used for housing supply if done up, restored, renovated, or simply rented out. Some supply currently exists but is not being utilised. This is the scourge of land banking.

Rents are high now and deflation is only generally associated with economic crashes. There is nothing identifiable yet that would indicate rental prices will decrease. The whole discussion, about increasing the supply being the solution to the housing affordability crisis, is just magic thinking. If left alone, the economic forces at work will prevent increasing supply being able to have a positive impact.

Former BNZ economist (and now an independent economist) Tony Alexander made a point in a NZME bulletin that getting tough on landlords will just drive up rental prices. However, I argue, prices not quality have been rising anyway. Therefore, now is the perfect time to remove interest deductibility from residential rental property, particularly as interest rates are currently low. Nobody is getting tough on landlords, rather investor demand is being dampened and investment capital gently directed away to the productive economy. (ref. Youtube, NZHerald.co.nz; March 1, 2021)

I repeat increased supply and intensification definitely needs to happen but it is not going to launch a huge reduction in house prices or rent as the forces driving investor demand will still be in place. And supply is still a long way off.

But there are things that can be done to free renters and house buyers from high prices by making the market work better. See solutions in Part 4 of this four part series.

Trend – Government as the good quality high paying tenant

The outlook for investors in the rental business is getting even better if rent is made to beneficiaries as the rents are paid direct to the landlord by the government. If there is an overloaded or not properly funded bureaucracy any complaints about the quality of the rental may be slow for the government to follow up on, but the rent continues to be passed through directly to landlords. Business loves it as it is a very secure income stream. If government has to pay repairs for damage it may be a more reliable payer than a private tenant.

On rental price settings that impact government, it was strongly anecdotally reported that with the Government’s first budget, where the accomodation allowance was raised by $50 a person, rents increased correspondingly. This showed the rental business market’s true colours. The rental rise was not based on costs but on the ability to extract the money as the government had declared it available. This shows the government therefore will become trapped in a cycle of paying for high rents by leaving so much of the rental market in this growing private business model.

Trend – business model housing is bad for the economy.

This is bad for the New Zealand economy. High rents, or mortgages (and for other utilities) means less disposable income for renters/mortgagees which leads to less stimulus into the rest of the economy. More disposable income could mean more people seek education, experience the arts, take up exercise, domestic travel, etc. All these are NZ based service industries that are struggling at the moment. But landlords in particular have a captive inelastic market where they can continue to raise rental prices even though interest rates are at a record low.

As said before, high house or rental prices prevent/slows people developing capital on which to create a business opportunity and/or push an innovation they may have developed.

As bad if not worse is the diversion of so much of New Zealand’s investment capital into a non-productive asset, residential housing. We need that investment capital to go into innovation projects and/or producing things for export, or for the services industries that our economy employs most of our people in. The housing market, built on a business model, is not a service industry we want to encourage.

And once the ‘build to rent’ companies take over and they are big enough they might list on the stock market and then the chances of it being sold overseas – with all the rental profits going overseas – becomes very real.

New Zealand will not get wealthy selling houses to each other.

No business representative group should be upset about this redirection of investment into the productive sector of the economy. It will benefit most businesses. It is only those rental businesses built on being highly debt leveraged that will have to change.

There are solutions to high housing prices and the affordability crisis outside a big business rental model, I talk about some solutions in Part 4 of this four part series.

Part 3 – The problems that come from a supply fixation as a solution to housing affordability

The government is aware of complexity in dealing with the housing affordability crisis so it wants to include the private market as part of the solution. They have reflected this in the Urban Growth Agenda. It encourages changes to relax planning rules to facilitate residential development and intensification. This means developers can force their dreams and vision through, rather than a community’s visions of a city being realised. History shows this will inevitably result in conflict and a firestorm will come down on the government and councils as the private market will not deliver affordable housing. Again, inevitably, government and councils will be blamed for damaging the cities as developers will insist they are simply following the rules. And, in turn, opposition political parties can exploit that conflict. The places where these ideas arose from is as follows.

Alternative ideas on affordability

Tony Alexander in the YouTube clip ‘When will house prices cool down/Cooking the books’ from March 1, 2021 says house prices won’t go down because low interest rates are what is driving the high prices. This is a factor because it makes it easier to borrow and leverage a property. But pressed for his suggestion to solve the housing crisis, it is not to raise interest rates (I agree with him) but to remove planning restrictions. This solution is linked to the defective increase supply argument as explained previously. He expresses sympathy for first home buyers and has a great analysis but overall he is passive about most of the factors driving affordability, they just exist for him. Using the metaphor of climate change, I think his analysis is more as a weather forecaster looking at the factors of the day but not as a climate scientist looking at what is underlying and driving the factors.

Alexander’s suggestion on planning is to relax the rules so that six story buildings can be built beside single story buildings. To take Wellington as an example, when this sort of absence of rules existed back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, huge amounts of heritage (for example in central Wellington, Te Aro flats and into Thorndon and Mount Victoria) were destroyed in an ugly way. This is why protection rules were introduced.

Alexander also critiques actions that impact the landlord/investor as being counter productive as any costs placed on them will just be passed on in rents. But even without any government actions rent prices are unaffordable. Fatalism, or perhaps a desire for defeatism, pervades his argument. Because if the actions were successful and investors are less active in the market there would be less demand and less push for prices to rise. And the New Zealand Property Council has said actions on removing the deductibility of interest would dampen investor demand.

• Can planning laws alone fix supply?

The answer is no because of the structural problems created by the ‘normal principles of taxation’ and the neo-liberal economic legacy that encourages excessive investor demand and that will hold housing values up – which holds up rents as well. Planning laws are needed to drive intensification which I fully support, but not at a cost to the historic character and liveability of a city. However, it appears the policy ideas Alexander supports are being listened to by the government.

Urban Growth Agenda – right idea, wrongly executed

For those on the left, the government’s recently developed Urban Growth Agenda is a neo liberal’s dream come true. Why? It is predicated on giving ‘permission’ to private developers to disregard the needs and wants of the existing local communities so the developer can build a six story build right beside one story houses meaning they will loose their sun and privacy with no chance to complain. The developer’s dream or plan (to make money) will come first and be forced through.

The Urban Growth Agenda does not have urban planning as its primary focus. It does have a vision of urban growth intensification which I fully support, but it is not ‘urban planning’. It has a feature Housing Infrastructure Fund which is money set aside to pay for infrastructure to support the private developer’s vision. This fund could cover parks, play areas, but it could also cover drains and water etc. But that is not urban planning for the local community. The risk is the fund will just be mitigation after an eyesore is built and the damage done to the house values of surrounding private home owners – the result: one group is allowed to make money over another group.

Some developers may not care if large buildings are built beside their properties as they can put one up beside it and each building can look into each other. The private developer sector’s vision is bounded by the constraints of; – I have this bit of land here and I need to maximise the profit from it so I stay comfortably in business. Even allowing for ideas like stunning new architecture it is still bounded by those facts. And those facts are not transformative urban planning in a positive community-led way.

The Urban Growth Agenda  also has the Housing Acceleration Fund which provides for government directed as well as private developments. Why should it include private developments when these companies already have access to funds through debt leveraging, which banks seem quite happy to do? Our current housing experience in Auckland already shows private developers are not building affordable housing. They advertise studio apartments for $600,000. This suits short term rentals (Airbnb) investments, or young men looking for a bolthole to call their own. And if a studio costing $600K is rented out, the rent will be high, it will not be affordable.

The history of private developers conflicting with the Resource Management Act is simply their vision conflicting with others who are also stakeholders in the community. A simple way to fix this problem is for there to be an earlier process to identify needs in the city, a proper urban plan of what the housing should approximately look like in this or that area or site, and then for developers bidding or volunteering to be part of that development. The current connect of development and ownership of random pieces of land and then developers trying to impose their vision on that piece of land is causing conflict. Urban development should be more planned. Areas should change as part of a process that is well signalled and worked towards over time. In many areas of central Wellington for example, this can be done quickly as there is so much low intensity commercial use.

The current Urban Growth Agenda is not urban planning but a one sided urban permission to build. The plan too much takes the side of the developers’ interests. Once high rises are built there will be community reactions. Developers will then say we are just doing what we are allowed to within the rules. The public will then turn on the rules makers (the government and council). It is a recipe for anger and conflict which is generally not good long term politics.

There are many ideas to fix the affordable housing crisis while increasing intensification which I fully support. I cover these in Part 4 of this four part series.

Wellington City – an example of planning relaxation that will not lead to intensification and affordable housing supply

Presumably following the Urban Growth Agenda the current Wellington City Council has gone zombie-logic against historic suburbs in the mistaken belief that this is the cause of a lack of intensification in the central city where more people want to live. But a simple glance across the city shows there is lots of low-level commercial buildings and plenty of land on which to intensively build (e.g. Te Aro), and there is little heritage over large parts. Huge fields of carparks cover large amounts of Te Aro. So intensification is not happening in the non-heritage areas, which indicates that heritage is not the cause of a lack of intensification.

There is simply no economic push to intensity which is why intensification hasn’t happened. And reducing the planning rules to increase the amount of land that could be available to intensify (which is what the council has done) will actually reduce the drive to intensify in the central areas.  The issue is simply not about heritage holding back intensification, and counterintuitively, is not about relaxing planning restrictions to increase the supply of land.

There needs to be some scarcity and an economic push to intensify (profit is a good one but that won’t make for affordable housing), and not just a council or government planning rule ‘we want to intensify’ and a permission ‘you can’. Developers will be screaming at this point ‘there is scarcity now!’ Okay? So what is causing that scarcity for their development ideas? Landbanking.

Developers have their little pieces of land they want to develop but they can’t get central city pieces of land because others own it and are just holding it for huge capital gains, (and possibly a lack of finance, or ideas, or ability, or desire). As an example; Wellington City is underdeveloped for central city living because of previous lax misguided neo-liberal councils and in part caused by reducing rates on commercial ratepayers and shifting (the cost of commercial rates reductions) onto residential taxpayers as part of the user pays philosophy. With lower land/rates costs businesses can afford to sprawl and underutilise land. Land banking is more cost effective with low costs. This has encouraged a lack of intensification of land use in the central city and encouraged suburban sprawl up the coast and Hutt Valley to get affordable housing.

The Wellington City council is currently allowing several developments of low level townhouses in the city, (car yards in Taranaki Street, and near Vivian Street between Willis and Victoria streets). The obvious question ‘why aren’t these semi industrial/commercial areas (car yards and carparks) developed into quality high-rise intensified living areas? The owners likely answer is – that low level two story builds are lower-cost to build compared to multi-storey builds, and therefore profit is maximised. But the real answer is nobody is demanding they build up or else. Developers should be instructed that as this site/area is slated for medium to high density housing, therefore they must comply and build it that way. And, if they are unwilling to do so, then perhaps somebody else will.

Another example to demonstrate this lack of push to build up, is car parks in Wellington. Carparks used to be many stories high. Now Te Aro has many sprawling field carparks. Parking provides enough income to business to cover costs. There is no drive for central city landowners to intensify and make the most of their land, so they do not. Council has listened and responded to developers who argued about planning issues, because that is what developers see. But what residents see is liveability with heritage. There are plenty of other areas to build affordable housing without destroying heritage.

The new Wellington Spatial Plan, which has significantly relaxed planning rules, is a disaster for heritage housing in central Wellington and the liveability of the city for all ratepayers. Heritage brings tourism and is one of the main factors that makes a place special and gives it character. Successful central cities have gardens and trees connected to history that allow views and sun. For those who have lived in and hated dilapidated heritage houses; that fault lies with the landowners who are land banking and exploiting people. That is what needs to stop.  Heritage housing can easily be renovated and restored to a modern exciting excellent standard.

To those who say heritage is a poor use of land which is not permitting inner city development to occur so as to accomodate an increase in inner city residents; and people come first. Heritage is people coming first. The brand new two story no parking townhouses in Taranaki Street are no more effective at housing than low level heritage. Yes more people will live there than before (it was a car yard) but what about the long term opportunity cost of not having medium to high density intensification on those sites. More importantly these are crammed in with little outlook or privacy. The chances of them being subject to an urban ‘Vicious cycle’ is quite high, i.e. good residents move out as the units are too cramped/not private/noisy from wooden frames, ergo; rents drop, maintenance drops, those with little means arrive, poverty can drive overcrowding, meaning more people move out, repeat.

But even if we destroy all heritage and built residential Burj Khalifi towers over every block in Wellington, a time will come when all space will be used with a maximum possible number of people – then what for the people who still want to come? My point; there is a limit to the number of people who can live central. New York did not destroy Central Park to allow more people to live central. Beijing didn’t destroy the Forbidden city to allow more people to live central. Wellington should not destroy its heritage either.

Heritage (pre-1930’s houses) is a very finite and dwindling resource that is critical to the Wellington economy, i.e. tourism, including domestic tourism. It is also critical for the liveability of all residents. And unfortunately New Zealand history can’t just be corralled to a few tiny zones as proposed in the plan because historic houses in Wellington have not been corralled previously, so they are mixed in with other buildings, that is the nature of history. The problems arise as though the buildings do not mind a big new six story building beside it, the people living there do, and they vote.

Relaxing planning rules on heritage is not the solution to drive intensification of the residential housing supply.  More planning and direct requirements on developers is needed, not less. But their projects can be supported when they accord or are adapted to fit with the community’s vision of the city. It could be that a developer may have land in an unsuitable location for their desired project but there may be land in another location, held by council, or government, or somebody else that could fit with that development. So it could be supported by a land transfer or some such vision.

I put forward several solutions to the housing affordability crisis and the need for intensification in Part 4 of this four part series.

I also suggest that Wellington City councillors roll back their Spatial Plan before the next local body election as there is already talk about councillors being challenged. It is a political gift to an opposition when large buildings are built in low level residential areas. Councillors want affordable housing and intensification like I do, but the roll back of planning restrictions is the empowerment of big business to force through changes they want without direct community involvement. You are facilitating the old neo-liberal ideas that have failed. (So Ironic that Nicola Young didn’t vote for less planning rules. Good on her.) On affordability you are saying to developers ‘you do it, build it, save us’. But that is simply not how they operate. They are attracted by the high prices for high rewards. But the high prices can’t deliver the affordable rents as they must have a sufficient return on capital. Your permission to developers to ignore the community is going to come back and bite you.

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Part 4. Solutions – What can we do to fix the housing affordability crisis

SOLUTIONS: We first need to acknowledge there is an affordable housing crisis. Also, it is not a political issue but a fact that needs action to be taken to address it. The current actions will not fix it because the underlying economic forces are still in place that trap investors in the housing market and an increasing number of renters will be trapped renting, with long term equity consequences for the New Zealand economy. That is the basis for the following suggestions. It is the crisis that means we must look at things that may previously have been unthinkable for many.

No political party should be upset about redirecting investment into the productive economy for innovation and exports. No political party should want to stop voters, the average New Zealander, having the chance to build some equity through owning a house, and possibly create business opportunities for their family and for the rest of society from that equity. Those on the conservative side might reflect on the fact that homeowners have traditionally been more conservative. Voters who are eternal renters may be less conservative than you would like.  Tough confronting solutions have to be looked at; it is a crisis.

The following areas of action are needed:

1. ‘The normal principles of taxation’ are overdue for a reset – not just for housing, but in regards to how it directs and shapes the economy, and supports tax avoidance. If done right, it can lead to a less growth oriented economic model but a more sustainable one. Less chance of boom/bust, with more economic activity that benefits smaller entrepreneurs and NZ based businesses. If we don’t do this the lack of affordable housing will remain a problem for New Zealand as the principles are twisted in our economic environment and it will continue to push money into housing that is not affordable. I have developed a submission that reduces tax avoidance, and by shutting down some behaviours it redirects investment capital into innovation, exports, technology, and small local businesses.
2. Provide councils, communities and government with the tools to urban plan more forcefully and directly. These can then be used to ramp up affordable housing much more quickly. The current idea with reduced planning rules is to give that ‘force’ to private developers.
3. Ensure the current housing stock is available and being used to reduce the affordable housing crisis.  This is a cheaper and quicker option than building new, especially compared with intensification projects.
4. Create secure, profitable, alternative investment options other than housing.

Government must take the lead

To build an affordable housing market there is no escaping the fact that the government must take the lead. It must be government projects first. The recent trends show private enterprise does not deliver affordable housing. The burden must be on private developers to prove otherwise.

How can the Government build affordable housing?

The government is best placed to provide affordable housing but is constrained by not having much control over urban land on which to build and intensify housing. And it needs to be fiscally prudent to prevent inflation so it must be careful about borrowing. So as the need for social housing is in crisis, the government should take some or all of the following steps to get hold of existing residential housing.

• Trade in house for investment security – mum and dad investors with one or two rentals may be willing to trade the rentals in for a long term Government ‘term deposit’ paying a high rate of interest that is sufficient to compensate for loss of the rental revenue. This means government gets a house it can provide instantly to a family or person in social need (displacement of demand by another renter occurs but it is for a higher need).
• Public Works Act acquisition – we do it for roads so let’s use it for affordable housing. Sites close to transport could be taken if they were identified for development. From my understanding the Act is actually generous and some people dream of the cash injection from having some rural land taken. A question to consider is; should it be this generous? (In the Netherlands and Germany such acquisitions for housing are normally made at existing land use cost – I’ve not researched what happens in New Zealand).
• Trade up a home for a home – If an intensive development is going to occur but some local houses are needed for that development then perhaps they should be invited to choose one of the brand new houses at no cost to surrender their existing house. This policy would need to consider how much mortgage there is to pay. Should some of that mortgage be paid as well?
• Low intensity land use swap – a developer may have a vision for urban housing intensification and can think of a site where it would be good but does not own the land. In such a situation, a process could be initiated to evaluate the desirability of the low intensity land use versus the quality ‘affordable’ development, and whether the two could be integrated e.g. business on a lower level with apartments above. Once a decision is made, a swap of land could be enforced and perhaps a small compensation paid. Exemptions for historic buildings can be made for low intensity use. Other factors would need to be considered. The same could also apply for the government or local council around transport hubs where they have a desire for housing intensification, or other urban planning objectives, like parks that would support intensified housing.
• Reverse mortgages for house acquisition – the government eyeing up future development sites or as a more general service, could enter the reverse mortgage market with lower fees and protections for these people. A purpose in this is that the house could eventually become an asset for affordable housing.  It should allow transfers from other entities that hold reverse mortgages. These mortgages are generally not good for home owners in rising markets.

Several of these options are relatively low cost to the government or a council. There is a cost layout but the asset (house and land) will be on the government’s/council’s books.

Once land is accumulated the process may be the government/council create a site, designing and planning its function and then inviting tenders to build it. If land is going to ancillary services or activities attached to it e.g shops, there may be the possibility of a joint cost or build. It could be that a site or area is identified and developers are invited to make proposals and tenders for development of that site.

Redirecting investment from housing.

• Trade in house for investment security – The first bullet above is a key component for redirecting investment. In some ways it is similar to a mum and dad rental investors who pay a property company to handle dealing with the rental (maintenance and monitoring etc) and the renters. So they don’t really see the rental house. This option would have to be developed and promoted.
• Micro private/public partnership – The government can also rethink the private/public partnership model which is heavily centred on cooperation with large corporate enterprises. The government could trial a descale down to individual New Zealand investors. A series of infrastructure projects (e.g. transport, housing, education, research, stadium) could be announced  and people could choose to sign up to invest in the ones they want to. Their capital could be used to support the construction and then they would get some sort of reward over time as the asset is used. It means New Zealanders can use their capital to back New Zealand projects and they can see the result. The government would have to ensure there is not too much exposure to risk, just like they do with a big business.

Other options to deliver affordable housing sooner.

• Requiring maintenance of historic houses – For historic houses (pre 1930’s) the local council should have the power, whether the building is rented or not, to require the owner to bring the house up to a modern or restored excellent standard of housing. A house cannot be left to become dilapidated even if the owner chooses to do that, because it is an asset for the city and future generations. It is also a little piece of carbon capture. But as importantly the community must ensure a person living there is not at a health, fire, or safety risk to themselves or others.  If the house is rented then the renting standards should apply – there should be no slum landlords. But the local council or government (perhaps administered by Heritage New Zealand) must decide if any action is to be taken. Should the owner not be financially able to update the house professionally, then the council/government should undertake the work and the amount spent becomes a low interest loan that is secured over the property. They should not be permitted to do the work themselves unless it is professionally being done and checked. Timeframes would be established. When the person sells or dies the loan can be collected from the house sale/disposal, or the house can move into the council’s or government’s stock of affordable housing assets with any balance in value paid out to the estate.
• An ‘empty home tax’. This is a tax in Vancouver as I understand. Anecdotally around Wellington there are lots of empty houses that could be rented but aren’t. Such houses should be sold if the person doesn’t want to do it up. Neighbours could be one of the main way this is identified. Obviously more work needs to be done to investigate and establish how this would work before it is applied.
• If a house has no occupier, then the house must be required to be rented – this is similar to an historic houses requirement and an empty home tax. If the house is in need of repair so it can then be rented, the council can undertake the work (contract in) and the cost of the work becomes a loan (normal interest) secured against the house. In Wellington for example there is anecdotally many empty houses that are a little rough but could quickly and easily be brought up to an excellent standard for rental. If the house is still not rented then the ‘empty home tax’ would apply. Details to stop delaying tactics would all need to be worked out.

These options would all generate local work and open opportunities for apprenticeships. They are quicker than new builds to increase the housing supply.

How should the government/council treat housing ownership when built through schemes it leads or looks after

The ownership model for affordable residential housing is open.

• Government ownership with rotating occupancy as people move on (Traditional state housing occupiers and rents).
• Rent to buy with financial support schemes from government to make this viable.
• Government (creates and builds affordable housing) on sells. The price will vary according to each development. Price would be influenced by market but pushed down to make affordability possible.
• Government owns houses but rentals not targeted to any economic group, rents capped at affordability for the renter. e.g. 20% of income. As income rises so does the rent.

A mix of the above is possible, and there may well be others. e.g. below – rent capped.

Rent capped?

According to some economists there should be no need to buy a house but just rent which gives social/economic mobility if people need to move for work or there’s a change in family circumstances. I do not support this model but it is not without some merit. If this was the case most housing should be owned by government or other entities and rent capped according to an ‘affordability’ concept. e.g. 20% of income. Some push back may occur if private entities complain about the ability to maintain property, or to get a sufficient return on capital.

You can clearly see the housing investment sector is currently in a holding pattern due to the government announcements on removing interest deductibility and the Inland Revenue discussion document that holds out the prospect of options to get around the restrictions. But if this rent cap was required by government now, it would certainly create a very quick and immediate reaction in the rental and housing sectors. It is not something I would recommend but excess investor demand would dry up almost instantly.

In summary

The New Zealand economy is a one horse pony based on residential housing. Excessive investor demand, driven by ‘the normal principles of taxation’, leveraging, and a lack of safe alternative investor options is holding up prices leading to a housing affordability crisis. High prices shut out working and middle class people from buying, and make saving deposits impossible as high prices mean high rents. Even if banks make huge loans for people to buy, this strips disposable income out of the economy just as high rents do. This leads to less demand through all other sectors of the New Zealand economy, e.g. education, arts, domestic tourism, hospitality, the ‘trades’. As importantly it leads to less chance for a person to build equity, to one day take up a business opportunity of their own making, which in turn could employ others and turn into a medium sized business that further benefits New Zealand.

New Zealand has had almost forty years of a private business model focus on housing and it has not delivered affordable housing but rather the opposite. It can not deliver supply to meet demand. The new ‘build to rent’ model is driven off the current system and the prospect of good profit, not affordability.  But we cannot build our way to sufficient quality affordable houses because all the drivers of excess demand remain in place, so prices will remain high. We need to make a collective effort, not just our private effort, and use the strength of government for; tax reform, overhaul existing housing stock, and building.

The affordable housing crisis is not just about the low quality of the lives of New Zealanders now and the problems from low levels of disposable incomes. It is now about the strength of the economic future of New Zealand, for our children’s and grandchildren’s sake.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Stephen Minto lives in Wellington with his two children. He worked for New Zealand Inland Revenue Department for approximately 33 years and is now enjoying no longer being bound by public service etiquette of being non-political.

The Greens have shaken up the election campaign with the announcement of their radical poverty and action plan to reform welfare provision and introduce a new wealth tax for millionaires. It’s a big-thinking, controversial policy and has generated a lot of disagreement over how radical it is, whether it could work, and what it might mean for the election. 

For the best reporting on the announcement, see Henry Cooke’s Green Party’s $8b plan would guarantee income of $325 a week, and pay for it with a wealth tax on millionaires. This explains how the Greens’ wealth tax would apply a 1% levy on people who have net assets above $1m – exempting the first $1m – and this would rise to 2% for subsequent wealth over $2m. There would also be new higher marginal tax rate of 37% for earnings over $100,000 a year, and 42% for earnings over $150,000. The increased revenue would be used to pay a “guaranteed minimum income” welfare payment of $325 to all those not in full-time work (including students, unemployed, part-timers, retired).

Praise from the left

Leftwing blogger No Right Turn is incredibly happy with the policy, saying: “Its bold, its progressive, it would make us a better, more equal society” – see: The Greens’ opening bid is transformational change.

Although the blogger would prefer a land tax rather than a wealth tax, which he suggests is easier for the rich to evade, he says a lot of the quibbles with the policy – such as whether the rich will simply be able to avoid the tax – are unfounded, as these can be fixed in the implementation phrase. However, he’s disappointed that the Labour Party appear to oppose the policy, which he puts down to too many in the party owning investment properties and generally being a force for the status quo.

Leftwing commentator Chris Trotter is also deeply disappointed by Labour’s apparent opposition to the policy, and suggests it’s typical of the party’s general moderate orientation in a time that requires boldness – see: Labour will not win with a yeah-nah strategy.

Trotter believes the Greens’ new policy “has the capacity to get young, poor voters up off the couch and into the polling booths.” He foresees the party possibly rolling out a similarly radical suite of policies which might “offer the voters something pretty close to a complete re-prioritisation of all the activity that makes up the New Zealand economy”.

Fellow Daily Blog writer Martyn Bradbury, is also a big supporter of the new policy: “For the first time in 3 years, the Greens finally give a reason why New Zealander’s should vote for them, and I’m genuinely surprised and pleased. The middle class woke identity politics, which has been so toxically alienating for the Greens and is why they have been floundering in the Polls, has been sidelined in favour of genuine social justice in welfare and a real economic philosophy of taxing the rich” – see: Finally a reason to vote for the Greens!

Newsroom’s editor Tim Murphy also praises the Greens’ policy for its radicalism and vision, saying the party deserves praise for being “the first party to offer a big, detailed and transformative policy in response to the economic tornado that is Covid-19. This is what political parties should be doing, 80 or so days out from a general election in the context of a major economic downturn” – see: The Greens’ cunning plan. He adds, “The Greens have shown us a medium to longer-term response to the economic crisis that challenges current political limits.”

Here’s Murphy’s main point: “the value in the Greens going early and going hard with such a sweeping policy is that the party has offered a response to the biggest crisis since the Great Depression that offers change beyond an orthodox, vast Government stimulus and infrastructure build. The party will be betting New Zealanders shaken by the rapid and comprehensive threat to jobs, incomes and futures will be open to a new, collectivist and non-judgmental platform where Kiwis accept they need to pay more from any wealth they have above million and two million dollar limits to help their sisters and brothers. Is there a new normal in compassion and sharing the burden?”

Critiques from the left

How radical is the policy? Leftwing playwright and satirist Dave Armstrong is generally supportive of the new policy but warns against seeing it as some kind of socialist nirvana: “So when we look at the Greens’ ‘far Left’ wealth tax, we have to remember that it is a slightly Left-of-centre party big on the environment and with the Right-wing ‘realist’ faction of the party firmly in control. To pay the Greens’ wealth tax you have to own an asset worth more than a million dollars. Even then you only pay a small amount of tax based on the amount over a million. So all those residents of leafy Wellington suburbs, mine included, can relax – especially if you co-own a house. Even if you own a million-dollar house and a million-dollar company, you’ll more likely be paying your accountant more per year than the wealth tax” – see: Greens’ wealth tax will appeal to Labour’s Left-wingers.

Armstrong points out that not only will the wealth tax be “about as potent as a shandy in global terms”, the resulting increased welfare payments will still be inadequate: “For many of us, living on $325 a week would be incredibly difficult. It’s hardly largesse.”

The Greens, Armstrong argues, are actually in broad alignment with all the parliamentary parties, who largely agree on the basic taxation settings: “Our five parties have an unspoken consensus that corporate tax must stay low, that indirect taxes must rise and direct taxes must fall, that our crippling – for the poor – GST rate of 15 per cent must remain, and that corporate tax be modest.”

However, the Greens’ policy will be useful for Labour, Armstrong says, because it means that they will be able to “come up with a wishy-washy centrist scheme to address child poverty and inequality and when there are howls of outrage from the anti-beneficiary Right, Labour can say, ‘it’s very moderate – nowhere as radical as what the Greens were proposing’.”

Leftwing blogger Steven Cowan is dismissive of the new policy, largely because it amounts to a band aid rather than a solution for inequality and poverty, which is actually produced in the economic system rather than the welfare system. He complains that the Greens are only willing to treat “the symptoms of the disease itself” as a way of avoiding the necessity of fundamental economic transformation – see: Treating the symptom and not the disease.

Like Armstrong, Cowan argues that the Greens’ proposed $325 per week isn’t enough to live on, and in fact is much lower than what the current government has deemed is necessary for those who lost their jobs during the current recession (they get $490/week). And because the Greens haven’t so far pushed Labour to be transformative during the last three years, Cowan finds it hard to imagine them doing it in the next term – hence he sees the policy as dead in the water.

Critiques from Labour and the right

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has poured cold water on the Greens’ policy, saying the wealthiest New Zealanders would simply change how they structure their assets in order to pay much less tax than the Greens have calculated. She has complained that the Greens have included some “fairly heroic assumptions” in their calculations that the proposed new tax would raise $8bn – see 1News’ ‘Significant behaviour change’ needs to be factored into Green’s proposed wealth tax, says PM.

Here are Ardern’s main points: “Some of the assumptions around people’s change in behaviour, they aren’t necessarily factoring in a significant behaviour change which often tax amendments like this would drive… Also the fact that people would change the value of their assets in order to avoid tax, the fact that people will often move funds offshore and also I’m interested in the underlying modelling which is not necessarily something I’ve had access to.”

On the political right, others have made some similar arguments about the weaknesses of such a wealth tax. National-aligned blogger David Farrar says the wealthiest can afford to use accountants and lawyers to hide their wealth: “Of course the super wealthy will pay nothing. They will have all their assets in trusts. This asset tax will just affect the prudent retired person or small business owner who has managed to save some money, but don’t have fancy lawyers to hide everything in trusts” – see: Greens want to tax, tax, tax.

Evaluations of wealth taxes

For an in-depth and thoughtful examination of the general pros and cons of wealth taxes, it’s worth reading Henry Cooke’s The crucial feature of the Greens’ wealth tax that would exempt most family homes. He explains why such taxes are not commonly advocated for in New Zealand: “There is a reason we tax income more than wealth in this country. Taxing wealth is very hard – both politically and logistically. It’s fairly easy to clip the ticket on someone’s pay packet every week, but a lot more difficult to ascertain exactly what they own, what it’s worth, and whether the public morally thinks that worth should be taxed at some level.”

Cooke also outlines how the Greens’ version of a wealth tax is actually rather moderate, and says it is difficult to see how it would raise as much revenue as the Greens suggest. This is because the tax only applies to the marginal income above a very high threshold, and assets such as houses are divided in value between the various owners – with each owner getting a $1m exemption.

So, for example, even if a couple owned a $2.1m home and had no mortgage, they each would only pay $500 a year in the tax. And, in fact, such couples might have the potential to reduce this further by making their children co-owners of the home: “it isn’t clear what would happen to stop people just putting their kids on the title of their home, spreading the wealth around a family and avoiding the tax.”

Similarly, Thomas Coughlan has written about how a wealth tax fits within the broader tax system, again pointing to the complexities of introducing this type of taxation – see: Taxing wealth: a necessary step, or unachievable pipe dream? He argues the benefit of the current system – which relies heavily on tax on incomes, spending, and corporate profits – is its effectiveness: “This ensures high rates of compliance because there’s no great reward for the costly practice of stashing your income somewhere the taxman can’t get at it.”

Coughlan interviews Robin Oliver, formerly the IRD’s deputy commissioner of policy and a member of the Government’s tax working group, who argues that such a wealth tax will have problems with valuing assets. He says a land tax would be preferable: “A land tax would be relatively more easy to implement as land values were independently calculated for rating purposes.” Oliver says: “All we’ve really got in New Zealand in assets is land… What we have is land, what’s untaxed is land.”

How the Greens’ policy might impact the election

Is there growing public interest in a wealth tax? Richard Harman thinks there might be, and he also points to growing international interest in such taxes – see: Ardern shuns Greens’ wealth tax; Nats mount scare campaign.

The problem, Harman says, is that the Labour Party will have very little desire to implement such a policy, making it “more or less dead on arrival”. And with Jacinda Ardern being so opposed to implementing a capital gains tax, she is “hardly likely to agree to a capital gains’ tax’s lesser cousin, a wealth tax.”

The Greens could yet get their plan implemented according to Barry Soper, who points out that with NZ First likely to be out of the picture the Greens might have the ability to make the policy a bottom-line for post-election negotiations – something the Greens aren’t ruling out – see: Is the Greens’ poverty plan a flight of fantasy? Think again.

For this reason, Soper suggests Labour’s best bet is to totally rule out the Greens’ proposal, otherwise it will give National and NZ First a strong campaigning message: “Smiling all the way to the ballot box if that doesn’t happen will be National, which will be out selling what a Labour/Greens coalition could look like. And so too will be handbrake Peters, who’ll be out there reminding the electorate of what he stopped Labour from doing”.

Similarly, Heather du Plessis-Allan urges Labour to unequivocally rule out the policy, lest it chase away centrist voters – see: Why the Green Party’s wealth tax is bad for Jacinda Ardern.

Here’s du Plessis-Allan’s main point: “Labour clearly hasn’t learned from the capital gains tax fiasco last election. Remember how that played out? As soon as the PM promised a CGT, her polls started falling. This time, it might not be her policy, but if it’s coming from a party she is most likely going to need, it’s close enough for some voters. Unless she rules this out, there is the risk that this becomes capital gains tax 2.0.”

Finally, for more about the advantages of a wealth tax, details of how it might work, along with some of its challenges – it’s worth reading Max Rashbrooke’s January report for the Tax Justice Aotearoa NZ: The case for a net wealth tax in New Zealand.

Fact Checking

On Mondays – or Tuesdays after public holidays – National Radio’s Kathryn Ryan runs a session called ‘Political Commentators’. On 28 April, from the right was regular commentator Matthew Hooton. From the left was Neal Jones who is listed as: “Chief of Staff to Labour Leader Jacinda Ardern, and prior to that was Chief of Staff to Andrew Little”.

It was good to hear Hooton now becoming something of an advocate for a Universal Basic Income (UBI), though (given past comments) I am not clear yet that he understands it fully.

It was concerning, however, to hear Jones – a man close to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – repeating falsehoods about Universal Basic Income. Jones said that a key problem with UBI is that it would be paid to New Zealand’s richest man, Graeme Hart. That comment reflects an attitude that is dismissive of universalism. Universalism is the basic principle that underpins democracy; and, more generally, underpins ‘horizontal equity’, the idea that we are all equal in our economic and other civil rights.

Perhaps even more importunately, Jones’ comment on Tuesday was false.

It was me who in 1991 first coined the term ‘Universal Basic Income’; my aim was to connect the established concept of ‘Basic Income’ (‘Citizens Income’ in the United Kingdom) with insights gleaned from New Zealand’s tradition of universal income support, as established in the 1938 Social Security reforms and as reaffirmed in the 1972 Royal Commission on Social Security.

The mechanism I envisaged in 1991 is: “a universal tax credit available to every adult – the universal basic income (UBI) – and a moderately high flat tax rate”.

(Refer to my ‘Briefing Paper’ From Universal Basic Income to Public Equity Dividends (2018) which in turn links to a report that links to, among other papers, my original 1991 University of Auckland Policy Discussion Paper. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first ever published use of the name ‘Universal Basic Income’. The name started to be used internationally after I presented a paper at the Basic Income European Network conference in Vienna in 1996.)

Since the 1990s, the concept of Universal Basic Income has become poorly defined, and tends to be seen, simplistically, as an unfunded handout, a kind of regularly paid ‘helicopter money’. In that sense, it is true that some proposals that use the name ‘Universal Basic Income’ would raise Graeme Hart’s income. But not all versions of UBI. In those versions that are truest to the underlying concept – Graeme Hart’s income would be unaffected.

So, once again, for the remainder of this essay, I am going to avoid the term ‘Universal Basic Income’. The term I will use here is ‘Universal Income Flat Tax’ (UIFT, if you will). This is a mechanism made up from a universal income and a single (flat) rate of income tax. Thus, the universal income is funded by the removal of the lower marginal tax rates. In the New Zealand case, that means the universal income replaces the 10.5%, 17.5% and 30% marginal tax concessions. With a single tax rate of 33% and a universal income of $175 per week, Graeme Hart would be completely unaffected, at least in the implementation phase. This represents a reconceptualisation of income tax rather than a redistribution of income.

The Mechanism at Work

Rather than labour the point about how we introduce the UIFT mechanism, it’s good to get the vision of the mechanism in action. It is a mechanism that addresses the issues of stability, precarity, equity, and sustainability. UIFT is not a sufficient panacea to cure all our economic ailments, just as the introduction of MMP did not remove the politics from politics. UIFT is, however, a mechanism that makes the necessary possible. It is an enabling mechanism for the evolution of liberal democracy. The Covid19 global emergency has shown more clearly than ever that our present ways of thinking about public finance are disabling, and as such threaten to bring about an end to liberal democracy in some parts of the world.

(Much of the disabling is due to the fact that many welfare benefits continue to be delivered to us in the form of tax exemptions, allowances, concessions and graduations. These are attractive to recipients because they are unconditional – they do not have to be applied for – and to policymakers because they barely contributes to public debates about social welfare. The big problem with this kind of benefit is that, when a person’s income declines, these tax-related benefits also decline. We tend to think of benefits as a cushion, or a safety net. These tax-related benefits represent the cushion being removed when we fall. The best benefits are cushions that are there for us when we fall, rather than cushions given to us when convalescing from an uncushioned fall.)

So, imagine that we already have in place a 33 percent income tax and a weekly basic universal income of $175. (For present beneficiaries, this $175 per week would represent the first $175 of their present benefit. This situation does not represent any substantial change from the income distribution we have become accustomed to. It is a conceptual change.)

How could we use this tax-benefit mechanism to address the four issues: stability; precarity; equity; sustainability?

Stability.

Stabilisation is the familiar issue of how societies use fiscal and monetary policies to manage normal economic downturns and upturns in the economy. Governments expect to pay more welfare benefits in an economic contraction (eg a recession), fewer benefits in an expansion. And governments expect to collect fewer taxes in a contraction, more taxes in an expansion.  Thus, we expect the government to run budget deficits during contractions and budget surpluses during expansions.

When we have welfare benefits that are easy to access, this process is known as automatic stabilisation. While such automatic benefits are good for the recipients, they are especially good for the stability of the economy as a whole. (Countries that already had a system of benefits in place before the Great Depression of the 1930s – notably Sweden and the United Kingdom – emerged from that emergency comparatively quickly, in 1932. Other countries – for example France and the United States – were still in economic depression at the onset of World War 2.)

The more bureaucratic the process of accessing benefits – and the more conditional those benefits are – the less efficient is the stabilisation process. (Reliance on benefits delivered as tax concessions is especially destabilising, because these benefits are lost when they are most needed. A particularly egregious example of a destabilising benefit in New Zealand at present is the In-Work Tax Credit, which, as its name suggests, is lost when recipients lose their employment. Another such benefit is the KiwiSaver annual tax credit of $521, which is progressively lost as a person’s gross weekly income falls below $1,043.)

Under the UIFT mechanism, the full universal income is retained when a person loses their job, or suffers a reduction in wages. And it’s instant, a genuine cushion; not a subsequent palliative. Further, this cushion benefit cushions people with partners still in work; many people (especially married women) do not qualify at all for present targeted bureaucratic Work and Income benefits.

When there is an economic expansion, under this UIFT regime, government income tax revenue increases by 33 cents in the dollar for every extra dollar of gross income; thus, during a normal economic upturn, the government moves into surplus more quickly and more automatically.

Precarity.

Precarity is the situation where many people are employed on short-term contracts; some may be expected to be ‘on call’ without being compensated for that restricted time. It also refers to many the self-employed people – free-lancers and small business operatives – whose labour incomes fluctuate with little predictability.

For these people, a basic universal income works as a personal economic stabiliser – a cushion allowing some income tide-over during down times – with a higher marginal tax rate which offsets this cushion in the good times. With the UIFT mechanism in place, these people can remain self-reliant, and will have minimal need to engage the welfare bureaucracy which needs to prioritise those people with structural income incapacity.

Further, the unconditional benefit component of the UIFT creates some incentive for self-employed workers to retain work-life balance, by not overworking at certain times, and by not penalising them when they need some downtime, such as family time.

Equity.

Equity is a central component of democracy. And equity represents the equal ownership of productive resources. Private equity represents the equal ownership rights of the principals of private businesses. Public equity represents the equal ownership rights of all economic citizens over those many productive resources which are not privately owned. Equity-holders expect to receive an economic return on their equity. There is no law of economics that restricts this capitalist expectation to private shareholders.

The consequence of this liberal democratic reasoning is that the universal income component of UIFT can be properly understood as an economic dividend; interest on the public equity represented by the public commons. And it also means that a universal income that is basic (ie low) need not remain low under all possible future circumstances.

Just as political citizenship reflects the universal suffrage, one person one vote, so, in a mature democracy, economic citizenship requires a universal publicly-sourced private income. One person, one equity dividend. A reflection on equity principles suggests that the universal income part of the UIFT mechanism should be understood as a public equity dividend.

A universal publicly-sourced private income is capital income, not labour income. It is a social dividend, not a wage. It is a yield on public capital. It is social capitalism at work, not socialism.

The word ‘equitable’ must be associated with an equalising mechanism. Here we may consider both financial inequality and time inequality.

A liberal democratic dividend means that one substantial part of the economic pie is distributed equally, and that the remainder of the economic pie is distributed unequally in line with market forces. It means that people experiencing substantial declines in their market incomes retain a personal stake in their liberal democracy, through their rights to an income from the public share. And it means that people experiencing increases in their market incomes do not simultaneously draw increases from the public share. Financial inequality is mitigated.

Time inequality is addressed, because the inclusion of an unconditional universal income gives encouragement to the overworked to work less, and for the underworked to work more. Without such an equalising mechanism, workers, who also lose public benefits when they lose private incomes, are disincentivised from reducing their work overloads. Likewise, people with little or no work know that, with UIFT, they will retain their publicly-sourced private income when they take on increased market workloads. The overworked work less and the underworked work more. For the unemployed and the underemployed, a basic universal income is work enabling; it facilitates rather than restricts labour supply.

Sustainability.

This issue relates to both the issue of robots and the issue of climate change. It relates more generally to the possibilities of being able to enjoy high living standards in a more relaxed form, and having a supply-elastic economy. At present we try to have a full-capacity (ie, ‘maxed out’) growing economy where we have little choice but to overproduce and overconsume. At present, our overconsumption is someone else’s livelihood.

The robot concern is that our economies will become too productive. The only thing scary about that scenario is that, at present, we have no social mechanism to distribute the proceeds of that productivity. In the absence of such a mechanism, the endgame is extreme inequality, which means (among other things) extreme poverty. An advanced society with extreme poverty has high unemployment of bothpeople and robots.

How does a mature UIFT mechanism address this issue? It addresses the issue by both raising the amount of universal income and by raising the income tax rate. If done in a neutral manner, then the overall extent of economic inequality (measured by the Gini Coefficient) would be unchanged.

In order to avoid increased inequality, both the universal benefit amount and the tax rate would need to increase. This would be a simple reflection of increasing capital income relative to labour income; more gross income accruing to ownership relative to income accruing to effort.

(At this point we might note, Graeme Hart, as a likely robot investor, would be even richer than he is now, before tax. While the UIFT mechanism would give him an increased public equity dividend, he would also pay more income tax. The net effect of these three influences on Hart’s income should be that his ‘disposable income’ would increase at about the national average.)

As this process of rising incomes and rising income taxes unfolds, it means that the public share of the economic pie increases relative to the market share. This increases the willingness of the overworked to work less. And it increases the understanding that paid work is a cost rather than a benefit. Rising public equity dividends relative to total income gives the necessary signal to the entire workforce to work less for money, and to embark on more projects that may not deliver financial returns. More voluntary unemployment, less involuntary unemployment. More ‘slack’, in the sense that slack represents market supply elasticity. An economy with more slack has the capacity to increase production when it needs to. In normal times, liberal capitalist economies should not be ‘maxed-out’; only in certain types of emergency.

We can now imagine a democratic capitalist world order, in which people choose to both earn less and spend less, while being assured that basic economic needs are covered, as well as many higher-order needs. Ironically, in our Covid19 lockdowns many of us gained a sense of that, though missing the coffee and ambience of the local café. But not missing the wider rat-race.

It is this slower living – which we have seen briefly – that has the potential to bring about environmental sustainability. We have heard more birdsong. We have smelled the flowers. We have heard that the people in China have lately seen the stars in the firmament.

We can have a high productivity economy without maxing-out our countries’ GDPs. We just need a mechanism to make the necessary possible.

What is the First Step?

In New Zealand, the first step is to reconceptualise our tax-benefit system, and in the process to apply a little relief to those who work hard without receiving high wages. This step would have easily been funded through tax revenue in 2019, pre-Covid19. Today this first step should be funded – and immediately, eg through the 14 May 2020 Budget – by Reserve Bank credit, just as the emergency wage subsidies have been funded.

See my Five Examples for any further clarification about how the transition to UIFT would affect different people.

In many other countries, the process will be more difficult. They have more complexities to unravel (compared to New Zealand) in their present income-tax scales. Australia could make the transition quite easily, with a 37% tax rate and a basic universal income of $240 per week.

We need political commentators with open minds.

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References:

Universal Basic Income (or Basic Universal Income) and Covid19. Scoop or Evening Report, 7 April 2020.

From Universal Basic Income to Public Equity Dividends (2018); Policy Observatory Briefing Papers, AUT, Auckland

Public Equity and Tax-Benefit Reform (2017); Policy Observatory, AUT, Auckland

The Universal Welfare State incorporating proposals for a Universal Basic Income, Keith Rankin, University of Auckland Policy Discussion Paper No.12, 1991

Constructing a Social Wage and a Social Dividend from New Zealand’s tax-benefit system, paper presented to the Basic Income European Network (BIEN) international conference; Vienna, Austria, 12-14 September 1996.
(Note that in this paper, I used the terms ‘full universal basic income’ and ‘adequate universal basic income’. My use here of words such as ‘full’ and ‘adequate’ are suggestive of the aspiration that a basic income could be more than a basic dividend; rather a substitute for a wage, and therefore a possible disincentive to engage with the labour market. However my emphasis in this paper – and subsequent papers – was the ‘social dividend’, a basic universal income that might eventually evolve into a non-basic payment.)

Ownership of the gross domestic product (GDP) is called ‘income’. Deciding who, at first cut, owns those goods and services is a matter of the accounting principles adopted. Here, applying Occam’s Razor, I favour the simplest accounting interpretation.

(We may note that there are two subsequent redistributions: the first redistribution relates to benefits and transfers; the second ‘deficit/surplus’ allocation relates to the process of some parties’ spending more than their post‑transfer incomes [deficit spending] offset by others who spend less than their incomes.)

The official national accounts acknowledge three main income funds, though in a convoluted way: private capital income (“operating surplus”), labour income (“compensation of employees”), and public income (“taxes”). The ‘convolution’ is the official practice of only acknowledging “indirect taxes” as public income. Direct taxes lie hidden within the two big private funds, with direct taxation being treated as a redistribution; a redivision that is too complex for the national accounts because – thanks to graduations and exemptions – each individual taxpayer is levied at a personalised tax rate.

This month’s chart simply applies the 33 percent tax rate that has been the cornerstone rate of income tax in New Zealand since 1988. In doing so, there is no claim that 33% is the optimal tax rate; the 33% rate is what it is, for better or worse. (Australia’s cornerstone rate is 37 percent.)

The blue portions of the chart represent unambiguous private income; income (already taxed) sourced through the marketplace. The capital and labour shares are roughly equal, and have been for some time. Together they make up 58 percent of GDP. (Note that the private sector includes net foreign claims on New Zealand’s GDP.)

The orange-shaded portions are public income. ‘Net indirect taxes’ are unambiguously public. ‘Gross income tax’, is calculated as 33 percent of ‘gross labour income and ‘gross capital income’. It arises from the application of simple, commonsense, national accounting. The public income share amounts to 42 percent of 2018/19 GDP.

Where does the public income share go? A sliver is saved, as the government’s fiscal surplus; this means that the private sector enjoyed some deficit spending in 2018/19.

A much bigger share of public income is spent directly by government, on collective goods and services such as education and healthcare.

The biggest share of public income is allocated to private parties as benefits and transfers. The biggest single component is the unconditional benefits granted as income tax concessions. Present distributional rules on benefits and transfers favour people at both ends of the income spectrum, but not hugely.

Rearranging this in favour of a more equal public distribution need not be an expensive exercise. Further, such a rearrangement has the potential – a result of the simplification process – to reduce permanently the demand for public administration services. The principal beneficiaries of such a rearrangement would be lower‑middle income households, and the young people struggling to make the transition from private dependence to autonomous adulthood.  The National Party could be promising that, if able to form a government in 2020, they will simplify public benefits in lieu of a more conventional tax reduction policy.

There is a sound argument that, so long as productivity is a significant contributor to increased GDP, the public income proportion of GDP should be increasing over time. This argument suggests that the 33 percent tax rate is a little bit on the low side. My sense is that the underlying public contribution to GDP is more like 45 percent than 42 percent. While a tax rate of 36.5 percent would yield such a 55:45 private:public distribution split, policy priority should probably favour simplification over tax increases.

Perhaps the public has looked at the Tax Working Group proposals for a capital gains tax and come back with a “no”. Certainly, the opinion poll published last night about the tax proposals looked quite definitive – the headline for Tova O’Brien’s Newshub scoop was: Large majority of New Zealanders don’t want capital gains tax – poll.

According to Newshub, a poll by Reid-Research – the polling company contracted to TV3 – “shows an overwhelming majority of voters – 65 percent – don’t think a CGT should be a priority for the Government. The poll found that just 22.8 percent think it should be a priority.”

More importantly, nearly 50 per cent opposed a capital gains tax on housing (with the family home exempt), against 39 per cent in favour. On the issue of businesses and farms being included, 54 per cent disagreed and 32 per cent agreed. And 69 per cent disagreed with a tax on shares, and 90 per cent disagreed with another tax on KiwiSaver.

Based on this poll, Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking has come out this morning to say the Government will ignore this poll at its peril: “If these numbers don’t wake them up, it might well be the break National have so badly been waiting for” – see: Numbers don’t lie, time for the Government to wake up over CGT.

In particular, Hosking says, it’s New Zealand First who will be most concerned: “these numbers, I would have thought, are about the final nail in the coffin for New Zealand First, who most see as the moderator of any excess that comes out of the Cullen report. If they weren’t hesitant to sign up before, surely the polling we’ve seen now is about as rock solid by way of proof as you could ever possibly want.”

Business NZ’s questionable data

However, Newshub’s Reid-Research poll wasn’t actually commissioned by them, but was instead paid for and set-up by Business New Zealand, a lobby group which is strongly opposed to the introduction of the full capital gains tax proposals. And, as always, the polling questions help determine the type of data produced.

So not only did Newshub report the survey in a questionable way, but the actual survey questions are rather unusual. For example, the headline figure is based on whether New Zealanders see the capital gains tax proposals as a priority. It is a useful question, with useful results, but it’s far from indicative of whether New Zealanders oppose the proposals.

Likewise, questions about whether the issue has harmed the government – 48 per cent say it has, against 33 per cent who say it hasn’t – are interesting, but not entirely useful. Similarly, it’s difficult to interpret the fact that 25 per cent of respondents say the issue would change how they vote, against 58 per cent who say it wouldn’t.

In general, when looking at the poll results, keep firmly in mind that the source is a lobby group with an interest in slanting the results a certain way. Similarly, the business group recently released research to show “estimates the ‘economic drag’ over the first five years of the proposed CGT regime at between $2.75 billion and $6.81b” – see Liam Dann’s Capital Gains Tax could cost NZ economy billions – Business NZ.

The head of Business NZ, Kirk Hope, explained that these concerning figures had been independently assessed by economists, and that the assumptions and estimates were actually “conservative” – i.e. the real figures are likely to be worse. However, this is all strongly challenged by Tom Pullar-Strecker in his article, What’s behind BusinessNZ’s claim CGT would cost $5 billion?

It turns out that many of Business NZ’s claims are less than rigorous. In fact, one of the economists, Chris Evans, who is cited as emphasising the likely high compliance costs of the new tax has been quoted out of context. Evans actually said “that the compliance costs would not be excessive”, and Pullar-Strecker reports his belief that the proposed CGT “would compare favourably with those in other countries, including Australia”.

Pullar-Strecker concludes his investigation into the lobby group’s report stating “BusinessNZ says it wants to start a debate, accepting its numbers aren’t perfect. But its figures may be better viewed as politicking dressed up as a study.”

This doesn’t mean that Business NZ are the only ones who might be accused of massaging the figures and evidence to suit their own arguments. Even the Tax Working Group and Treasury are being criticised for their questionable use of wealth inequality data to make their arguments in favour of change – see Troy Bowker’s Why argument of Capital Gains Tax fairness is based on unreliable data.

According to Bowker, the CGT report was based on wealth statistics gathered by Statistics New Zealand, which were used to show that few New Zealanders would be subject to the new taxes. However, “By the Department of Statistics own admission, it contains data that is so unreliable they cautioned against its use.”

Other capital gains tax surveys

There has been some other public polling about the tax proposals that provide additional and alternative information. The most recent was published just over a week ago, by the Horizon Research company, and this is best covered by Liam Dann in his article, More Kiwis support capital gains tax than oppose in new poll. Most notably, this survey showed much stronger support for the tax proposals: “44 per cent of New Zealand adults supported introducing a capital gains tax and 35 per cent opposed it. A further 16 per cent are neutral on the new tax, while 6 per cent did not know.”

This poll was particularly interesting and useful, because it also indicated how different voters and asset-owners felt about the proposals. Here’s the different political party supporters in favour and against: Labour (60 per cent support; 14 per cent oppose), National (23 support; 62 oppose), Greens (75 support; 14 oppose), and NZ First (30 support; 55 oppose).

In terms of asset owners: those with shares (56 per cent oppose), with rental properties without a mortgage (66 oppose); with rental properties with a mortgage (74 oppose); and those with farms or large lifestyle blocks (90 oppose).

Some farmers are actually showing increased support today for a capital gains tax on farms, particularly when the asset is brought and sold in a short space of time. Newshub reports today that “Federated Farmers vice president Andrew Hoggard told Newshub people’s gains from quickly selling on farms need to be targeted first” – see: Farm flippers should be taxed – Federated Farmers.

It’s also interesting to look at a survey of business owners, which was carried out by the MYOB company, and showed that opposition from this sector wasn’t as clear as might be assumed: “Most business owners are against a capital gains tax but a survey found fewer than half were strongly opposed and a fifth were supportive” – see Tom Pullar-Strecker’s Capital gains tax compromise inevitable, accounting body believes.

This article shows that “Backing for a CGT was strongest among ‘Gen Y and Z’ business owners – with more than a quarter of them happy to stomach the tax – and from business owners in Wellington, while ‘baby boomers’ were more likely to be opposed.” In addition, research in New Zealand from the Certified Accountants Australia found that “there was a minority of business owners who did not like a CGT but who felt it would be necessary to meet the country’s future social and economic challenges”.

New public debate on CGT

A new campaign was launched yesterday to provide a pro-CGT perspective in the current debate. The Tax Justice Aotearoa launch at Parliament is best covered by Tom Pullar-Strecker, who points out that “Much of the lobbying over a CGT to date has come from groups opposed to the tax, which include the Taxpayers Union”, and the new campaign is meant to even up the disparity – see: CGT supporters and Taxpayers Union take tax wrangle to Parliament.

The article reports concerns about the political independence of the new campaign, as well as whether taxpayer funds are being used to assist it, especially because of the involvement of the Public Health Association, which receives funding from the Ministry of Health. The article reports: “PHA chief executive Prudence Stone clarified it had not provided any cash or resources for Tax Justice Aotearoa to date but did not rule out doing so in future.”

The campaign has established a petition: Tell Jacinda we want a capital gains tax. It’s time to join the modern world, which currently has 1,200 signatures.

Although Tax Justice Aotearoa’s petition appears to implicitly support the Government’s Tax Working Group proposals for a capital gains tax, including the exemption of a family home and the package being fiscally-neutral, two of the campaign’s organisers explain in more detail their advocacy of tax reform, which involves going further than what is currently proposed – see Paul Barber and Louise Delany’s Why we’re shouting about a capital gains tax.

In line with some of these messages, it’s also worth reading today’s opinion piece by Alison Pavlovich who emphases some of the selling points she believes are missing from the debate on the current proposals, such as the importance of equity in the tax system, and pairing of tax cuts with the CGT – see: The point being missed in the capital gains tax debate.

Finally, for humour on the tax proposals, see my updated blog post, Cartoons about the proposed capital gains tax.