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Great podcast with Raf this week, I’m one of the stragglers who struggled to get to the live event, but wanted to comment on the land tax issue.

A way to make it politically more palatable would be to remove a range of existing taxes at the same time. A 1% land tax, levied across all land would generate enough revenue to eliminate let’s say GST (which is very regressive) and income taxes (which would then encourage work by reducing the very high marginal tax rates at low incomes). It would then solve the whole ‘tax deductibility’ debate, and eliminate a lot of pointless structuring around tax.

There are a lot of details and challenges, but the key is removing a tax as well as introducing one. Carbon and sin taxes on consumables can remain, and we can tax luxury rather than necessities.

Noting of course that money isn’t a ‘real’ constraint, this is mainly to maximise the productive capacity of the country.

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TOPS idea of a redidential tax is good but why not go after land bankers starting on those land owners with covenants to keep the competition out (e.g. Supermakert owners, Z energy, and the like). NZ established a pretty good formula back in the 1880s where large land owners were asked to value their land for rating purposes, with the local authority having the right to buy the land at that valuation if it was deemed it was needed for strategic city development. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1819941.pdf

Likewise the local authoities should go after 40, 000 homeowners who don’t want to rent their empty “investment” homes. They could apply an additional avoided rental tax computed on a the income tax rate based on the rent they could have received.

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Kia Ora Bernard, if we ain’t talking about animal agriculture we ain’t talking climate change.

#milked Have you seen this…?

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Love your commitment Bernard but you need to take weekends off. 😊

Maurice

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Make politics boring again haha really enjoyed this, Raf sounds like such a measured, normal person compared to so many in the arena at the moment. But I promise not to vote based on personality! hehe

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