Posts by Michael Homer
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OnPoint: Sunlight Resistance, in reply to James W,
people who hacked into the Labour website
They really, really didn't. I wish people would stop saying this; it's needlessly inflammatory and false to the point of undermining any legitimate complaints that are attached to it.
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Online voting is a mindbogglingly terrible idea. Electronic voting in general is a terrible idea, because it's entirely unverifiable. Doing it online only makes it worse.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to mark taslov,
it was my family home, I moved into a rest home, there are is CGT on family homes, so if I sell my family home before I die the family member can inherit the cash and pay no CGT, but if I die before selling the home, then the CGT must be paid when my family sells the (2nd) home? So it’s a tax on me dying before converting the asset?
I don't know what the precise definition of "family home" was intended to be, and I suspect it was a detail to be hammered out later.
The exception is bad policy, really. So if your point is that CGT should be uniformly applied to all assets - yes, probably. It's fairly obvious why it wasn't, though.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to mark taslov,
capital gains payable on cash
No. It was already paid (if applicable) when you sold whatever got you the cash. Cash by definition has not increased in value from any time to any other time.
or other inheritance such as collections
If there is some capital gain (increase in value) between the later date of the passage of the law or the acquisition of the items, and you then sell the items, yes. If you don't sell them - no. If they haven't appreciated in value - no.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to BenWilson,
you are forced to realize the gain when you die
No you aren't. That was the point of the policy passage he quoted, even.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to BenWilson,
Well, except in the purely trivial sense, that all taxes are death taxes. You either pay them while you’re alive, or they’ll take the difference off you when you die.
... except in this actual case, because they only take it when you realise the gain, not when you die, which mark seems to think happens (or something). It's exactly the same cost at exactly the same time whether you're immortal or it's inherited a dozen times before it's sold. Someone dying makes no difference at all, which is as it should be.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to mark taslov,
So basically when a family member dies and leave something of their life’s work to their offspring, Labour wanted to slip in there and skim some off the top when they sell it. I can’t for the life of me understand the ethical position. It’s a death tax. Avoidable by selling your family home in that briefest moment before you issue your last breath.
If you sold it and there was a capital gain you'd pay tax on it, whenever it was sold; your estate would either have an asset that could be realised for $X or $X in cash. There is no sense in which it is a "death tax".
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Over the last week or so I've been gradually growing a Greasemonkey script that adds a little "Ignore" button next to posts. When you click the button, it hides all other posts by that user afterwards, as well as any direct replies to them. Hidden posts are collapsed to one line and can be shown by clicking a "Reveal" button. Perhaps some others will also find it useful for retaining their peace of mind: PAS Ignore.
You will need Greasemonkey for Firefox or Tampermonkey for Chrome to use it.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to ,
You're allowed to be elected after you get out. Your seat automatically becomes vacant upon conviction but you could even run in the by-election if you're not actually imprisoned at the time.
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Primary-school "science" is a pretty meaningless category and I'd imagine that the survey results come down to interpretation of what constitutes teaching science. Dinosaurs, space, and Antarctica were popular topics when I was at primary school, but I don't think any of them were ever actually tagged as being "science", and I could imagine the school saying "no". Genuinely having no scientific content taught at all would be very difficult, particularly given how integrated the approach to everything is outside the English/maths pair.