Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: Circumstance and coincidence, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Not impressed with The Justice Wylie on this decision. More suppression. Where the hell have our rights gone? I’d be right pissed at the mo if I was TV3.
Media do not have an automatic right to record anything and everything that happens in our courts. Indeed, there is a lot that they're forbidden to record by the general court rules for media coverage (pg 74-76) unless the presiding judge rules otherwise. It's forbidden to use footage other than in the programme or on the website nominated in the request for media access, for example, or to use it for promo or trailer footage. Pretty sure that those rules were broken by this clip.
It's called contempt of court.
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OnPoint: Why does the top 10% paying…, in reply to Rob Stowell,
the philthy rich
Ben's not talking about that level, though. He's talking about people who own (at least mostly) their own home and have a moderate income. Their home may well be worth in the vicinity of a million dollars, courtesy of house price inflation, but their income is not enough to put them into the top decile or, quite possibly, even into the ninth decile. They're far from being "philthy rich", but they aren't on median incomes with a student loan and watching the bottom rung of the housing ladder disappearing into the clouds.
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OnPoint: Why does the top 10% paying…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I do however believe that the wealthy should contribute more to paying for the things we agree the government should provide.
For reasons not least of which is that they have done well from the government’s provision of services and infrastructure thus far. They get an educated, (moderately) healthy workforce; they don’t have to hire their own investigative/prosecutorial and fire suppression forces; they have access to transport and telecommunications infrastructure; etc, etc. The Elizabeth Warren doctrine.
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I did not miss the point. I read the question, and answered it. Why would IRD report generally on capital gains when they're not taxable? IRD is only interested in things that can be taxed, it's the sole reason IRD exists.
If you want to get a handle on capital gains, you need Stats, not IRD. Stats reports on "all sources" income, not just on taxable income.
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OnPoint: Why does the top 10% paying…, in reply to WH,
I think you may have misunderstood my original point, which was about New Zealand’s income distribution rather than the operation of our tax legislation.
Your original question was:
Do the IRD’s figures include capital gains (such as increases in the value of investments) as income?
I answered, in the context of NZ tax law, as is appropriate to a discussion about New Zealand taxation. IRD only reports as income that which gets reported to it as income. They do not have any knowledge of "income" that is not taxable.
People then bringing up opinions from foreign jurisdictions about whether capital gains are income is irrelevant to this discussion. -
Hard News: Circumstance and coincidence, in reply to william blake,
If Clapper had come on a Boeing with a diplomatic retinue it would have been spooky business as usual, and something that the New Zealand public can vote on.
Formally unannounced in USAF FK-U1, but not caring to hide his presence is heavy handed and militaristic.
You are a wee bit confused about how senior members of the US establishment travel. They do not use commercial flights. There are whole segments of the US Air Force dedicated solely to transporting Distinguished Visitors (in USAF parlance), including senior members of the intelligence services of which Clapper is the most senior of all.
The US does not trust personnel of such seniority to civilian air transport on official international business. It does not happen. They fly about on military aircraft with full communications links to the motherland.Clapper is not a diplomat, either. He’s a very senior spook. They don’t get welcoming parties and bands and a military guard of honour. They arrive, they conduct their business, and they leave again. So much, so normal. If John Kerry arrived in such a manner you could be sure something was up. For the King Spook, though, it’s just what one would expect.
It's clear you don't like it, but there is nothing remarkable about how Clapper travelled to NZ. It doesn't make the visit any more or less sinister and clandestine, no matter what music Campbell Live's production team lays over the photographs and videos.
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OnPoint: Why does the top 10% paying…, in reply to Paul Campbell,
I think that people arguing here for a change in the law to tax most capital gains as income – saying we shouldn’t advocate it should be income because it’s currently not taxed that way sort of defeats any discussion about changing the law.
At what point did I say I didn't support a CGT? At what point did I advocate for the status quo?
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OnPoint: Why does the top 10% paying…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
the dairy sector: $26mln in corporate and personal income tax during ’09. With dairy exports in the $11bln range, that’s a lot of unpaid tax.
Or historic losses carried forward, as the industry claims. It's not a straightforward problem to establish how an industry with such high revenue could generate so little taxable income, but the figures do vary an enormous amount from year to year which gives at least some weight to heavy losses in previous years being carried forward. Also a high-capital industry with very long depreciation times on key equipment (IIRC the depreciation time on a rotary milking shed is about 15 years).
That they're working on such slim margins, though, says that there's gotta be something keeping the farmers going than just the annual pay-out from Fonterra.
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OnPoint: Why does the top 10% paying…, in reply to WH,
capital gains aren’t income. If they were, they’d be taxed.
I’m not sure that’s right.
Capital gains are already taxed in a large number of jurisdictions, including the UK, the US and Australia. The US-based Tax Policy Center states that:
Capital gains are generally included in taxable income
What, exactly, does an American tax policy paper have to do with New Zealand tax law?
In New Zealand, capital gains are (generally, with some specific exceptions which have been subjected to a lot of gaming in the past) not treated as income therefore they are not taxable. If they were income, they’d be taxed as income. They’re not, therefore they are not.ETA: I'm using "income" in the strict, Income Tax Act 2007 sense, not the colloquial sense. In this discussion, the ITA sense is the only one that matters.
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Hard News: Circumstance and coincidence, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Kind defeats the purpose unless he bought a lot of other folks with him.
I wonder who they were?.Read the article. Those planes get used for just one or two extremely senior staff, with a large retinue of office staff and technicians (and sometimes media) in tow.
Does it actually matter how he got here? Really? It's a decision for the US to make, and it's made that particular decision. It's not anything abnormal or special for Clapper to have come here in that manner.