Posts by Matthew Poole
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I do find it curious though how commonly the negative reactions centre on "Current exemptions good and rational; any other exemptions fiendishly complicated and irrational."
Nobody's saying that exempting fruit and veges isn't rational, even those of us who think the idea's bloody stupid. We're saying that current exemptions are easily defined and don't require suppliers of goods and services to do an item-by-item classification of everything they sell. They're also really only applicable to a few thousand businesses, at most, so it's pretty easy for IRD to check compliance.
A change to GST application to fruit and vege will first raise the issue of "What's covered?", and then apply to pretty much every supermarket, dairy, convenience store and school tuck shop in the country. Every outlet that sells fruit, and there're plenty of places that otherwise wouldn't have to worry, either stops selling it (decreasing general availability) or starts dealing with the new rules. For places that still use old-style ringing-bell tills, that probably means they'll just stop supplying fruit entirely. Good outcome? No, not so much.All the arguments of "But xyz country does it" don't seem to consider that a) they've always done it, right from the outset of the regime in question, so there was no extra cost to retro-fit the capability to accounting systems, and b) doesn't examine the costs of compliance and enforcement that come with a more-complicated regime. Those costs may be invisible to most people, but they are definitely real and they definitely have to be paid. The money's got to come from somewhere, and that means tax-payers and consumers.
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Isn't the correct question; do the benefits of making the system more complicated outweigh the costs?
Which is, really, the point that Ben and I are trying to make. Not only is there a taxpayer-borne cost of increased IRD activity around compliance, because the room for error and exploitation increases significantly, but there's also a consumer-borne cost of increased advisory activity (and software development costs initially that will be very, very significant for at least the first year, probably the first two or three) around compliance and the outcomes of failing to comply.
Even if every cent of the cut is passed on by every retailer, it'll have to be accompanied by a general increase in prices to cover the extra money required to pay for the accounting services involved. Suddenly that decrease isn't so big. And the money that IRD willl need to ensure compliance means either tax increases (yeah fucking right!) or spending cuts in other areas.Anderton's (it was Anderton, wasn't it?) suggestion that it'll come out of decreased health spending ignores a) the lengthy lead-time in seeing the benefits of people eating better, and b) that our health budget will never shrink by $250m+ while we've got a population that's rapidly getting older.
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To those who haven't thought about the enforcement costs or think that they're being over-egged by the likes of Ben, consider this: GST is already the most-disputed part of our tax system and it's incredibly simple. The exceptions are, as others have said, applied to entire business sectors not just to particular items on particular shelves in particular retailers.
Who pays for appeals to the Taxation Review Authority? To the Courts? For the accounting and/or legal advice on classification of goods? The IRD? From whose money? The taxpayer? From whose money? No matter how this goes down, the complexity means increased enforcement costs and those costs will be passed on to the taxpayer and the consumer. No two ways about it. For the curious I suggest going to Google and asking it about the "jaffa tea cake case", to see just how utterly fucking ridiculous some of these enforcement situations can get.
Right now, if you run pretty much any retail operation you have to return GST on everything you sell. There's no room for "judgement" on what is and isn't subject to GST. Change the rules, and suddenly there's a room for operators to under-report their GST. Right now it's pretty easy for a computer to look at input vs output and spot a fraud. That won't remain the case if this change happens, at great cost to IRD for extra audit and enforcement activity, and at great cost to the taxpayer. It'll also be bad for honest operators who don't get to chisel a few extra cents on marginal items.
This is nothing to do with, as Tom sneered, brainwashing, or to do with how easy or hard it is to do the books now that things are computerised ( where they're computerised. I've seen many shops that still use old-fashioned tills with heavy-duty push buttons), and everything to do with recognising that any such change will be taken advantage of and carries costs associated with catching such advantage-taking that will consume a significant amount of whatever notional savings existed in the first place. And with a supermarket duopoly, I don't like the odds of much of it being passed on in the biggest outlets.
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I do think we should remove vote-splitting (so that an electorate vote implies a vote for the candidates party)
Disagree - last election I was in Ohariu-Belmont. I voted for Charles Chauvel because Peter Dunne... But I party-voted Greens because I really wanted them in parliament.
Another disagree. I was in Epsom in '08 (now in Maungakiekie), and happy as I was to vote for Worthless Dick - vain as the vote may have been - as an attempt at countering Rodders, there was no way I was going to throw my party vote at National.
I'm a little disappointed that I don't get to take visceral pleasure in not voting for Rodney next year, but at least he's doing a sufficiently good job of making himself unelectable that it's not likely to really matter.
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Rich, assuming that a reporter was even present in the courtroom where the case was resolved, you may be right. But if it's a nobody, even if it's a nobody lawyer, is the reporter's publisher going to be prepared to spring for the legal time to appeal the suppression?
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They could have challenged the suppression order (as has happened in various cases with notable non-political defendants). I've seen no sign of this.
Fair call.
Not really, Russell. In 2005 Garrett was a nobody lawyer who might've been familiar to the membership of the iSST but certainly wasn't a national figure. He didn't come to any real notoriety until much closer to his appointment on Act's list, which Wikipedia says was two months out from the '08 election.
By that point, the name suppression was thoroughly done-and-dusted. No judge would overturn it just because the recipient of the court's largesse was actually an ethically-challenged hypocrite on the verge of getting a say in such largesse being available in the future. That's not how it works. The only reason the order got overturned now was because Garrett asked the court to reverse itself. Had Garrett chosen to make an issue of the order being breached, as would've been his right, I doubt even the Supreme Court would've allowed for the order to be revoked so far post granting. -
"Should have got Gerry to do it."
Will inevitably give rise to...
B1, what's with that?
B2, oh it's been Gerry-rigged.And never mind the Gerry-mander.
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The fact is that to be able to keep secrets you sometimes have to lie. Maybe they thought his bullshit was a good thing.
Steve, that's assuming it was something of which the SIS were even aware. I'd say it's about 50:50 as to whether or not that's the case, and the officer running the vetting may have decided that whatever example was presented was irrelevant. It's a little unfortunate that we'll probably never be allowed to know the specifics of what transpired, but there's a fair bit of misunderstanding about just what security vetting actually investigates.
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what about the former Head Defence Scientist? My guess is that his CV simply listed his military service and sporting interests, and he put the gloss on about being James Bond verbally, in interview.
One thing that doesn't seem to have been spelled out to (or possibly by) the media is that security vetting isn't meant to be a check of employment references. If a person lies in their CV, the SIS may not even see the offending document never mind investigate the claims. That's meant to be the role of whoever handles the recruitment.
Security vetting isn't a test of "Can they do the job?" it's a test of "Can we trust them with secrets?" You don't have to be a saint to get a clearance, you just have to convince the SIS that you're not likely to be vulnerable to pressure to improperly disclose classified information - the whole point of the warts-and-all investigation is to make sure that your dirty laundry is known to your employer so that it can't be used to blackmail you. While it sounds like Wilce probably wasn't a great choice as head of Defence Tech in terms of his work history, that doesn't mean that he's a security risk. If he provided a verifable history going back 10 years, with referees of an acceptable quality to support his character (note: character, not claims of employment prowess), that'll get him past a vetting.
From what I've read, the claims relate to activities 20-plus years ago. By default the SIS look 10 years into your past for a vetting, going futher only if a matter of concern is found that needs more investigation. Concern comes from dubious acquaintances or habits, money problems, or travel to countries of ill-repute. It doesn't come from things you purport in the employment process that relate to what you supposedly did 20-plus years ago.
If Wilce got the job on the basis of puffed-up claims, shame on Momentum. But if everything relevant to his vetting checks out there's no corresponding shame on the SIS.
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Happily, the news is that NZ On Screen is joining the O-zone.
That's nice, but there are many other things that I think would be more useful. A discounting of traffic originating over peering links would be nice, and reflective of the actual cost of presenting that traffic to the user. As would an Orcon-based mirror of the Ubuntu and Fedora repositories, and the Windows Update site. Those can be some seriously hefty downloads, and Orcon offers no way to get them without eating into your traffic allocation.
Similarly getting TV3's streaming site onto the O-zone would benefit a lot of people. I'm sure there are many others, such as all the various radio stations that stream from their sites.