Posts by izogi
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Polity: Is being a tax haven worth it?, in reply to Moz,
Wasn't there a case in Christchurch a few years ago where a drunk got in a car and drove it through a crowd of people, injuring if not killing people? No "attempted murder" or even "assault with deadly weapon" charges there IIRC.
I'm not sure if it's the incident to which you're referring, but in 2007 there was an incident on Edgeware Road for which the driver was convicted of two murders and sentenced to a minimum of 17 years jail without parole.
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Hard News: Forgetting what we didn't know, in reply to Jim Cathcart,
Be that as it may, it's the type of explanation of complex topics that I wish our local high profile media were providing more of. As it is, I'm not sure some of them even understand nor care about the issues themselves.
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Hard News: Forgetting what we didn't know, in reply to Tom Johnson,
A large chunk of the conservative electorate are not issue based but in love with the weird security of the big blue N. Very difficult to shift public opinion with such crosby textor enablers running our news services.
I don't blame the majority for not drawing the connections of why the activities of people offshore, whom they've never met, will have any effect on their wellbeing whatsoever. I think there's something to be said for explaining to people how things like this are actually relevant to their daily lives, whether it's through satire or simply explaining it in terms people are used to.
Exposing politicians as corrupt or deceptive goes so far, but after a point people just throw up their hands and scream that it's too complicated and abstract, and they're all useless, and the politicians in power ride it out.. which is more or less what happened in 2014, and is very possibly what's happening now.
In the end I reckon it's actual policies, or perceptions of policies and the effect they'll have on people's day-to-day lives, which make the difference. Australia has some really good examples of explaining complicated concepts in ways that make them relevant. eg. How do you explain the effects of something like Negative Gearing on house prices to the populace? The Project had a go, in prime time TV in a way that you'd almost certainly never see Seven Sharp or Story bother with. (facebook video link).
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Polity: Is being a tax haven worth it?, in reply to Marc C,
The challenges put to Labour's Andrew Little and the Green's James Shaw are now in the form of questions like: "But have you found anything illegal?" As the way the law is, and as the way the system is ALLOWED to operate (thus far), the activities revealed are in the form of the foreign owned trusts held in New Zealand not strictly illegal.
..which also conveniently misses the point, for those who claim this. If someone discovered a technicality which enabled them to legally kill a person they didn't like, and did so, would that make it okay? Or would it make it a serious issue with the law that needed to be fixed? What if that technicality had been identified years before, and the government of the day had actively done nothing?
And listening to Andrew Little on Morning Report, where Guyon Espiner gave him some hard time, asking him, why he thought ALL should be called to be "grubby" who hold such trusts, Labour have an uphill battle again.
I don't fully agree with how Andrew Little and Labour have responded to this. He still doesn't interview brilliantly, but at least he's actually turning up to be interviewed by people like Guyon Espiner. That's more than the Prime Minister can say, who instead chooses to only expose himself to breakfast TV hosts who already spend significant amounts of their time being blanket apologists instead of actually aiming to challenge anyone and everyone they interview.
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Polity: Is being a tax haven worth it?, in reply to Alfie,
While a rather large conspiracy is certainly emerging, it’s Key whose hands are looking dirty.
This is true, but it's also not the first time that accusations have flown about corruption and dirtyness in politics (esp with the current government), and lately that's had little effect except to polarise people's opinions one way or another.
If the discussion is framed in a way which makes it clearer how everyone's lives are worse off, or will be, as a consequence of all this foreign trust mess, then I think it'll be more likely to have a lasting effect.
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Polity: Is being a tax haven worth it?, in reply to Alfie,
Paul Brislen:
There has to be more to it than that and that, frankly, worries me
Alfie:
Exactly.
It also looks suspect to me, but I'd not rule out government's PR machine simply trying to let themselves down lightly, as opposed to largely admitting to an outright failure on their watch to bother to do anything about it for so long. Malice versus stupidity, and so on.
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Polity: Is being a tax haven worth it?, in reply to Sacha,
Better still, from the same IRD estimate, that only results in $3m tax paid here.
Yeah, but you'll put a few lawyers on the benefit, which the rest of us then have to pay for. So really it costs more.
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Polity: Is being a tax haven worth it?, in reply to linger,
Yes, possibly. For me it was Australia, though as far as I remember, IRD's IR3 form (and accompayning instructions) does not ask where the money was earned. It only asks how much foreign income was earned compared with how much foreign tax was paid on that income, even going as far as to specify the conversion rates that must be used on a month-by-month basis.
I'd expect you're right about the company & residency thing, though. Maybe someone who's well versed in tax law and trust management and company creation knows how to legally avoid answering the question, or shuffling money around to answer it differently from how I did. Really my main confusion with the AFR explanation is why other countries apparently don't scrutinise how much tax was paid for their residents, but only that any tax was paid, if that's indeed part of the story. It didn't seem to go far enough to fully explain.
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Polity: Is being a tax haven worth it?, in reply to Russell Brown,
But there was another advantage because technically the LTC was taxed, it's just that the tax rate was set at zero. One French investor who moved his holding company from Luxembourg to a New Zealand LTC knew he would pay no tax. But New Zealand has a double-tax treaty with France, which meant that he could repatriate the profit to France where it was not taxable because it had already been "taxed" in New Zealand.
I don't understand this part.
When I've had income from overseas, like when my former employer paid my last salary payment some time after I'd shifted and become a NZ tax resident again whilst still working for them... or where money I left in an account overseas earned interest (and was taxed RWT), it didn't work this way at all. There was no obvious rule in NZ where IRD simply ignored that income simply because it'd had "some" tax deducted. Instead, IRD asked how much tax had been taken from it already, and used that to offset the amount I owed to New Zealand.
If France completely ignores its residents' income simply because another country has indicated having taxed it regardless of rate, shouldn't France also be taking some joint responsibility here?
I'm sure there's more to it than this, I don't doubt that someone with appropriate skill could manipulate the existing rules for their desired outcome. I'm not at all trying to absolve NZ from some ethical responsibility here, but that explanation of "New Zealand taxes at 0%" seems overly simplistic.
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But it would counsel Mr Thompson "to avoid doing a Weldon"
(It sucks to see what Radio NZ is going through, though.)