Posts by Moz
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Actually, from a completely different point of view: right now, if I could, I would cheerfully invest in a company or do it myself, if I could buy panels to put on someone else's house. The economics are there, it's just a difficult thing to do in practice because the margins are not so large that you can afford a string of profit-takers in the middle (and the rules are so unstable in Australia that the main risk would be sovereign). One issue with "community solar" in Sydney is that every time a group identifies a site that they could put panels on, they approach a supplier company and the site owner... and in many cases where the site is viable those two do a deal that cuts out the neighbourhood solar scheme. So yes, it is profitable.
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Hard News: Going solar?, in reply to JonathanM,
Folks - if it was a 'no brainer' to move to solar - every one would do it; instead we have the arguments for/against for trying to save planet/energy/money.
The problem is that there's multiple levels that the argument is taking place at. Purely financially, and for a single homeowner it's currently marginal in Australia (given the current subsidies to coal, oil, gas and pv) and similarly in NZ. If you assume a grid connection it becomes marginal in NZ and worth while in much of Australia. But there are a lot of arguments like the above about whether people should be allowed to do it and how much they should pay and be paid. And it's money that (for most people) would be better spent insulating their house to reduce demand and increase health and comfort.
At a neighbourhood level it's worth while financially for both countries, but legislatively it's impossible. The fees and regulations for grid operators are designed for national or state level operations, and they just don't work even for a new subdivision, let alone an existing one. Which means that until it's financially overwhelming it's not going to be possible to bypass the national; grid. It's illegal to throw a cable over the back fence and sell power to your neighbour, in other words.
At a national level it's a whole different ball game. Technically NZ should already be at 90% renewable, as we were in the 1980's. But politically? That's just not an option. The question is more whether we will destroy the economy to build more stranded assets (fossil generators), or see it grind slowly to a halt as foreign owners let assets decay. I can't see the current brown parties even allowing a big solar generator to be built, let alone change the subsidy model away from fossil fuels towards solar. Although again, technically a CSP+storage plant in Northland would work very well. It would effectively be a combination peaking plant and baseload, because you can "spend" the storage whenever you like. So if there's a peak you can dump the storage to service it, but if there's not you can bleed it out overnight ready to charge up the next day. The political consequences of a major job-producing investment in Te Tai Tokerau would be interesting as well.
In Australia Beyond Zero Emissions did a major study showing that a transition to 100% sustainable electricity by 2050 would be profitable even with unfavourable assumptions. That was later verified/reproduced by the Climate Change Authority. But right now both NZ and Australia have governments committed to favouring fossil fuels over sustainable ones, and they are the people who control the economics.
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Hard News: Going solar?, in reply to BenWilson,
The solar customers do pay for their grid use, don't they? Also, they supply power into the grid from their own investment, and at a massively discounted rate. How are they being subsidized?
The argument is AFAIK that the fixed supply charge is less than the cost of providing the grid, so net-zero {1} solar users benefit from the usage charges paid by others. For people using the grid as a battery (net usage zero or negative) that argument has some weight, except that the usage charges are normally structured so that you pay a lot more than you earn meaning those people are paying a hefty fee for their "battery" (over 50%, sometimes 90%).
The underlying problem is that the more people rant about the evils of low or negative power users, and the higher the fees they have to pay, the more attractive it becomes for them to drop off the grid entirely. It's called the "grid death spiral" problem.
The funniest suggestion I've seen is that every land title would be charged a "grid access fee", basically for running the infrastructure past the property. In the US attempts at this have failed because it's so obviously unreasonable. Those laws have to deal with "20km from the nearest road" farm blocks ($500k+ to run a power line in) as well as "back section urban densification" sites with no road access, as well as dwellings built over multiple titles and occupied by little old ladies who fought in WWII (and thus make great media stories).
{1} net zero by whatever definition you want to use, typically either "generate enough that their total bill is zero" or just "net usage is zero".
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Hard News: A wretched editorial, in reply to Samuel Buckman,
Why do people talk about political affiliations the same way we would talk about financial conflicts of interest?
To demonstrate that facts are irrelevant, or perhaps that they feel safe with a great deal of hypocrisy. The whole "did she dislike National before they shat in her breakfast" question is one that's hard to answer.
I mean, if that standard had any relevance many media outlets wouldn't be able to criticise half the political spectrum. Can you imagine the Herald if they never criticised anyone left of Key? Aside from having a lot of space to make up, half their writers wouldn't know what to talk about.
Mind you, their standard for financial conflicts of interest is very loose, so perhaps it wouldn't make too much difference. I'm amused that in Oz there's pressure for Clive Palmer to abstain on votes affecting his mining interests, but in NZ no-one seems to ask Key to do anything similar (any more, anyway).
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Hard News: A wretched editorial, in reply to Danielle,
Feminist theorists have been talking about rape culture for about 40 years now. Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will came out in 1975
thank you. I had a foamy reply on its way but that's very polite and succint.
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Speaker: Why a renter died from turning…, in reply to Allan MacLachlan,
Did he know he needed a qualified plumber/gas fitter? Maybe, maybe not, but the courts thought that he ought to have known and have convicted him.
Which is what I think they needed to do. I've seen enough poor repairs and just plain illegal stuff that I've got no real patience with the "I am too ignorant" defense. Our legal system specifically disallows that defense in almost all situations anyway (and for good reason). The main time you can use it, BTW, is "I am too stupid to be able to understand the law" which few people leap for when under pressure.
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Speaker: Why a renter died from turning…, in reply to Allan MacLachlan,
The IRD has guidelines which are easily accessible by googling something like "income from boarders
You mean the link I put in that message? Yes, and a key requirement of "boarders" seems to be that I'm providing food (and furniture?), which I'm not. So those rules don't apply as far as I can tell. The PropertyTalk forums suggest the shared costs model has to be used, but also that the situation is not well defined by the IRD. I would hate to be the person who'd been using the boarder rules and got told the shared costs rules applied (receipts? What receipts?), especially since I'm not the property owner so the shared costs model may not even apply. I mean, presumably it does and in 25 years no-one has ever asked, so it's probably a theoretical issue.
All the advice I've been able to find starts with the suggestion of putting everyone on the lease and wanders off into irrelevance from there. "what to do when no current resident is on the lease, your only contact for the landlord is a bank account number and the hot water heater has stopped working" is just not covered. What we did is get it fixed and take the money out of the rent. A couple of months later a grumpy letter ("The Tenants, 123 Here St") arrived in the mail, we posted back a copy of the receipt (to "Bromsky Partnership, PO Box 123") and never heard from them again.
Rich: yeah, the gap between what we do in practice and the legal theory is a bit vague. But when the gummit demands that I get a "friendship warrant of fitness" and starts hunting down people who don't pay for their round your example will become much more immediately relevant.
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Speaker: Why a renter died from turning…, in reply to TracyMac,
Of course, there will be much wailing and bitching from those who will insist naughty landlords will avoid registration, that the "good guys" will be penalised,
The rental bond lodgement law would be a good guide to that, I think. The penalty for not lodging is high enough that I don't know of any cases where it hasn't been done. I've read about cases in the media where scumlords have failed to lodge as well as a heap of other dodgy things, but once you're into organised criminality I think "not paying tax" is pretty much guaranteed to be on the list regardless.
I suspect that even just an information-sharing deal around bond lodgement would solve 99% of the problem.
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Speaker: Why a renter died from turning…, in reply to izogi,
could IRD’s question about rents received potentially be used to identify many landlords?
Oh, absolutely. And by rights it should. I'm firmly on the side of making landlords operate responsibly for both reasons, as it happens. I've been renting and in share houses for 25-odd years now and I'm a bit over crappy landlords renting out crappy houses. Plus if this did make residential "investment" less attractive I'd be more able to buy a house to live in.
But I've also seen people I know get into difficult situations because the tax arrangements are not as clear as we might hope. There's also issues around the time taken to comply with any requirements not being free. It sounds all well and good to get people to "just fill out a tax form", but when that also means traking every expense and producing itemised reports backed with receipts, you can easily add a hundred hours a year to the cost of owning a rental property. And by "rental property" I mean "the home you live in", because the complex cases are the share houses. When it's a rental you don't live in it's usually more obvious what the costs are and how/if they're split.
One friend of mine has a three bedroom house and now lives by herself because the cost and hassle of dealing with the tax department, council and tenancy people was just too much. Which is ugly both financially and environmentally, but between stuff like the tax department saying "prove that the food kitty is not taxable income" (WTF?) and then auditing her three years out of four, and the council saying "tenant car parking permits require a separate application and extra fees" then wanting her to pay for their investigation into whether she was running an illegal/unregistered boarding house (no, she had two tenants, not five) she just said "screw it, I already work 60 hours a week", booted the flatmates out, and bought a cat.
The other people I know who have flatmates to help pay the mortgage just keep quiet, don't charge a bond (so they don't have to lodge it), and don't pay tax. The net result for the tax office is the same, but there's a lot less paperwork.
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Speaker: Why a renter died from turning…, in reply to izogi,
I’ll take your word for it that this isn’t possible
I've asked an accountant at a social event and their (unofficial) advice was not to discuss it with the tax department. In Australia if you own the house then broadly the costs are deductable and the NZ situation seems simpler if you're supplying food etc, but for share housing I can't find anything useful.