Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: Gaying Out, in reply to Paul Williams,
It’s increasingly clear that Key doesn’t see himself in politics for much longer.
Knocked that childhood-dream bastard off, time to move on to the next challenge. Though quite what that would be, I’m not sure. President of the US is out, and he doesn’t lean the “right” way for a post with the UN. Maybe he’s angling for CEO of SuperGlobalMega Corp? Or perhaps he just wants to retire the Hawaii and write “Memoirs of a Grinning Backstabber”, where he reveals his position on '81, and gay marriage, and all those other pesky, enigmatic details that ought matter not to the prolles because they're only insights into his mind and, well, the prolles should just accept the governance of their financial betters, without question.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Steve Parks,
Matthew and Ben are the productive ones. I’m the filthy commie. The devilishly handsome filthy commie.
I'm not terribly productive at present. Too much time wasted responding to Mr X and his inability to answer the question :P
I would be a filthy commie, but I'm expected to maintain a high standard of personal grooming so I have to make do with being a clean, pin-striped commie instead. Well, during the working week, at least.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to BenWilson,
you actually used “you” to mean “one”, first.
True. Though after the first occurrence it was consistently "you" as in "DexterX" rather than "you" as in "one".
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to DexterX,
I think you don’t understand things or have a real perspective when you say:
Remember, you evaluate a tax for long-term effects, not short-term ones, though the way you keep on evading the topic I have no faith that you a) understand long-term vs short-term effects or b) actually have the slightest real understanding of what you’re saying.
Who is the “you”, you are referring to.
In this case, you, specifically. Because you seem unable to separate short-term effects from long-term ones, and are using the short-term ones to argue against a CGT. If you have evidence (not just your oft re-stated opinion!) that there will be a long-term rise in the rate at which rents increase that is greater than the rate of increase without a CGT, I ask you, again, to post it!
ETA: And again, the irony of that first quoted sentence, it burns.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to BenWilson,
As I understand it, anyone who is doing this as a business already pays income tax for gains (or if they do it as a company they pay company tax). Unless you’re talking about people who are using the “no intention to make gains” loophole. Yes, those people will not be able to continue avoiding paying fair tax for their profits. How many people are doing this?
Enough people are doing it for there to be a problem (of course, IMO, that people can do it is a problem) in the eyes of a number of learned commentators. Starting with Craig Elliffe, it seems; why else would he propose a broad CGT if there wasn’t a heap of extra tax to be caught?
ETA: And you should’ve said “ anyone who is doing this as a business should already pay income tax for gains," since there’s a lot of avoidance going on.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to DexterX,
The IRD Tax guide on rental property provides that if you sell an asset for more than its adjusted tax value the difference between the sale price and the adjusted tax value is to be included in your taxable income. So the gain ore achieves is already taxed.
Again, theory is nice in theory, but rather trickier in practice. What the IRD and the law say and what actually happens is entirely different. If your odds of getting audited are sufficiently slim - and they are - then there's a strong incentive to under-report taxable income. The IRD acknowledge that it's a problem, and part of the reason they've been getting extra Budget funding for enforcement is so that they try and crack the problem.
Could you perhaps point to something other than the IRD's compliance guides to support you assertion that there's no problem with avoiding tax on capital gains from property speculation? That's like pointing to the laws about DUI to support assertions that nobody drives drunk.
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Dexter, FYI, the moderators do get tired of people who argue in bad faith. Try addressing the questions posed by others instead of continuously ignoring them and demanding evidence (provided) to support their positions.
You’re very polite about it, but you have not actually answered a single question about an evidential basis for your position. You’ve done it so consistently that other people have noticed and started talking about it. I think you’re very close to being accused of being a sub-bridge dweller. -
OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to DexterX,
I feel this thread is an exercise is in pseudoscience,
The irony. It burns.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to DexterX,
Matthews says “consistent CGT will raise quite a lot of money”, so where will that money come from? In my view it will come from rent – that is the stuff that tenants pay and landlords collect.
Again with the presumption that the CGT would be levied annually on value rather than at sale based on profit. Explain, please, why you are the only person in here who's suggesting that that would be the way it would be done?
And can you please explain why a CGT would cause the rate of rent increases to exceed in perpetuity the rate of rent increases should there be no CGT? Please? Because you've said many times that you think this will happen without giving a shred of supporting evidence.
Remember, you evaluate a tax for long-term effects, not short-term ones, though the way you keep on evading the topic I have no faith that you a) understand long-term vs short-term effects or b) actually have the slightest real understanding of what you're saying.As for my dead-weight taxes, it was a supposition. I don't know enough about the various types of taxes (or enough economics) to evaluate them all for economic impact and decide if one has a greater dead-weight impact than another.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to DexterX,
I don’t support CGT Labour are wanting nor the and asset sales the Nats promote as a solution as:
1) they won’t help grow the economy
2) they will increase the costs of living in rents and higher power pricesYou say it with such absolute conviction, but you offer no analysis, never mind proof, to support your blanket assertions.
I don't necessarily disagree with you about power prices, but we definitely disagree on the impact on rents. I've got economics - both theoretical and observed - on my side. You have nowt but your gut, and your gut does a very poor job of explaining its long-term view. You have put forward not a skerrick of supporting evidence to back up your claims that rents will rise further, long-term, than they will without a CGT, you just state that it will be so.Similarly, you have put forward nothing to support your absolute certainty that a CGT will do nothing for the economy. If we broaden the tax base, taxes with a significant dead-weight impact could be reduced, or abolished. Or R&D credits could be reintroduced. Hell, we could even offer that tax relief to exporters that you've been burbling about. The evidence says that a broad, consistent CGT will raise quite a lot of money, and that can either be used to improve government services (which goodness knows we'll need by the time English has his claws prised from the Treasury strings), or to offset other tax income for an overall neutral tax impact.