Posts by izogi
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Labour's Fiscal Plan:…, in reply to Swan,
The capital gains tax has been sold as a means of directing investment away from residential property. But the tax will apply to 100% of the commercial property market, 100% of industry, shares, agriculture etc, and only about a third of the residential property market.
Does it matter? I know the popular political line right now is about residential property, but what's the actual argument for not having a (well designed) CGT, except that we don't already have one and that so many people have engineered their existing activities and life savings around that?
As in, why should income be treated differently depending on whether it comes from a home sale or business sale or a salary or a farm sale or dividends or wherever else?
I'm also not a tax accountant, but to me a lack of a CGT seems to say to anyone that if they have a small bundle of money, then they should buy a house with it (because houses are easiest right now), even if they don't want one, and therefore push up the value of houses, or make that house less available to someone else, and result in someone else who might use the money more effectively not getting it.
-
Legal Beagle: Suicide Reporting; or, The…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
We report road deaths in great detail and that combined with the application of tremendous creative talents in the advertising industry has actually reduced our road toll.
Not to mention being a strong argument for increased funding for roads. I don’t want to politicise this aspect too much away from Graeme’s topic, but consider how the public’s sense of priorities might be influenced if suicides were as visible as road deaths.
Also from Graeme:
Almost five months spent trying to republish publicly available information, and [—snip—] I was now prohibited from telling you about the existence of a Coroner’s Court in Christchurch.
Ouch. In my limited dealings with the office, it took much less for me to come away thinking it was unnecessarily hard to deal with. (For me it was simply having to post a physical written request to get a particular Inquest Report which interested me. This was in about 2010. Maybe I'm spoiled by internet. It could be easier now.)
-
Hard News: The Letter, in reply to Russell Brown,
But we seem to have a situation where the government gets the information immediately and can make use of it while a journalist is made to wait nearly a month before being refused.
On the topic, are there any guidelines or rules around politically motivated use of the extensive powers and oversight which Ministers have?
For me it's fine that a Minister sees what's going in and out of their department, generally speaking, but this (if true) seems to be more about abusing that privilege when there's a clear conflict of interest between doing the appointed job and winning an election.
-
Hard News: The Letter, in reply to Raymond A Francis,
Cunliffe is leading the floating voters who change Goverments in this country to think that we are not ready for a left leaning government yet
Is it really the floating voters who make the difference, when it comes down to it?
Between the last couple of elections, National gained only 5000 votes but it also gained 2.5% of the total, because 100,000 fewer people voted. Elsewhere, there were 75,000 fewer votes between Labour/Green, even though the GP gained 90,000!
Maybe there’s some huge mythical power of unpredictible non-voting young people out there to be harnessed, but I suspect there’s a much greater significance with traditional Labour supporters who aren’t changing sides but are simply so disillusioned by what they’re seeing that they can’t motivate themselves towards actually endorsing it, or anyone else, with their vote.
-
Speaker: The problem of “horror tenants”…, in reply to Moz,
Share housing in Australia is even more fraught, FWIW. [….] But those requirement also seem to be rarely enforced, we’ve had inspections where there were obviously 7 people living there with 3 on the lease and the agent didn’t blink.
I was never in a flatting situation in Australia, but for the 3 years in VIC we still found the de facto standard rental tenacy agreements to be quite scary. Consumer Affairs Victoria has a nice, template agreement somewhere on its website. I read it once for fun, and it looked reasonably fairly weighted on both sides. Nobody actually uses it, of course. In Melbourne we found it difficult to find any property which wasn’t being rented through an agent. Agents all had an identical standard agreements that’s extremely weighted in their favour, right down to the exact text layout, with the only difference being their varied agency letterheads on top.
The worst part of this agreement, buried in everyone’s fine print, is that if you apply to rent a property, and are then offered it, then you’re committing to accepting the offer and renting it for the entire year’s lease! Put this into the context of doing the rounds, searching maybe 10+ properties on a Saturday, each of which has 20 interested couples looking through it. There’s no way to be confident that you’ll be offered any specific property which you apply for, so it’s completely impractical to apply for only one at a time, just in case you’re successful.
Upon querying, of course, it was laughed off with a smile, as if they were amazed we’d actually read the thing, and we were told that it was never enforced. In fact, many disturbing clauses which we saw on the standard agent-provided tenancy agreements, and had little choice about signing if we wanted a place to live, were never enforced. They basically put them there because they know they can get away with it, and that prospective tenants have next-to-no choice. Their main interest seems to be simply to have the flexibility of picking and choosing reasons to evict anyone they like if that person turns out to be inconvenient.
Other people’s experience may vary, but despite a multitude of crappy issues with some NZ landlords, I’ve never yet in New Zealand struck that feeling of a total lack of control in reasonable tenancy terms as we found in Victoria.
-
Hard News: Meanwhile back at the polls, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Thanks for that.
-
Hard News: Meanwhile back at the polls, in reply to Russell Brown,
Williams is a classic rent-a-quote. He’ll fire out inane press releases and respond to journalists’ calls even when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Sorry to stray from the original topic, but this story from The Press this morning makes me wonder what's going on even more. Specifically --- "a joint research project by the Taxpayers Union and Fairfax Media".
There seems to be more of a relationship happening there than a simple "please comment" type of thing.
-
Speaker: The problem of “horror tenants”…, in reply to Elinor Chisholm,
I agree that there are many great landlords who take great care of their properties
It’s not a certain thing, but generally our own experience has been that renting direct from owners is a much better experience than renting through property agents.
More often than not, we’ve found that agents are generally disinterested in the property, except for making sure they get paid. At best we’ve been treated neutrally and at worst we’ve been treated as potential criminals since the day we shifted in. If they’re the less professional sort, they also have a great idea of what they can get away with. From her student flatting days, my partner has multiple stories about agents (one major one in particular) completely abusing tenants rights, with actions like unlocking and walking into the property with zero notice, to show random people around. It “stopped” after a few complaints, but she was always worried she might be in the shower when this happened. After a while there were certain agencies which we’d immediately hang up on if their machine answered the phone when we dialed a number on an ad.
More recently, we’ve been outright lied to by agents about things like the number of people who recently rented a property and how long they stayed. (It says something when you’re getting mail for 10 different people over the following 6 months, I only wish we’d photographed all the envelopes.) You can complain about that type of crap to the tenancy tribunal, but what does it actually get you in the end when it’s something that’s already happened? If you’re that annoyed, it’s probably easier and less stressful to simply shift out and gamble on finding some place better.
In contrast when dealing with owners we’ve at least had mixed experiences, and we usually find that they directly appreciate the value of good tenants once they've found them. We had landlords a few years ago, in particular, who were a wonderful couple, and we got on well.
Anyway, we’re very fortunate enough to be renting more for convenience than because we absolutely have to. After our current lease is up (which was advertised as 100 sqm but we’ve since measured it as 70 sqm—some things you just don’t think to check in the superficial inspection that’s typically possible when renting), we’ll probably be out of here and aiming to buy. I, for one, am looking forward to actually being able to invest in all the little things for making our home liveable, which a landlord would never bother with, without having to worry about the risk that an owner might decide to boot us out for their own convenience as soon as the next year rolls around.
-
Hard News: Meanwhile back at the polls, in reply to Russell Brown,
Williams is a classic rent-a-quote. He’ll fire out inane press releases and respond to journalists’ calls even when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
True. I don't think I'd mind so much if he didn't purport to be speaking for me, and apparently for every person in NZ who pays tax, and then seemingly getting media credit for it. Is stinks of the same type of tactics Imperial Tobacco was using a few years ago when it created the "Association of Community Retailers", except the Herald was motivated enough to make a deal out of that one.
-
Hard News: Meanwhile back at the polls, in reply to Roger Lacey,
I’m dismayed by the way the mainstream media use the prime minister as a political commentator and allow him to put his spin on other parties’ policies without question.
I feel similarly about how Jordan Williams is increasingly being used as a spokesperson for "all taxpayers", apparently by reason of naming his self-appointed-board-with-a-fan-club, which could never be legally registered as a union given its rules, as "the taxpayers union". Sadly it's just how things are working today.