Earlier this week, Nicola Willis, National’s finance spokesman, released information she had obtained from Inland Revenue regarding the cost-of-living payments. Included in this information was the fact that some 6,629 payments were made to individuals with overseas mailing addresses. Now it is possible that some of those persons did actually meet the criteria of being tax resident and also physically present in New Zealand at the time of the payment, however it seems more likely most of those payments were made to ineligible recipients.
This data supports anecdotal evidence I’ve heard from other tax agents who have reported examples of non-resident clients receiving the payment. And the fact that a significant number of payments were made to apparently readily identifiable non-residents is concerning is concerning and points to a potentially systemic error.
Nicola Willis also asked a number of questions regarding ineligible recipients. According to written answers provided by the Minister of Revenue currently, Inland Revenue is not aware of any recipients who were either in prison or under the age of 18, which is a bit reassuring.
It also emerged that 49,300 payments were made to persons who only declared investment income. Now that’s an interesting statistic itself, but as an Inland Revenue spokesman noted, the eligibility conditions did not prohibit payments to such persons so long as they met the three key criteria of their income being under $70,000 are tax resident and are physically present in New Zealand at the time of payment.
In the wake of the fallout from the first payment cycle in August, Inland Revenue has tightened up its processes before the second wave of payments made at the start of this month. As a result, the number of people receiving cost-of-living payments dropped by about 54,000. These types of checks apparently included Inland Revenue screening and questioning people who accessed their myIR accounts from an overseas Internet address.
MyIR is likely to be an extremely useful tool for Inland Revenue for spotting potential discrepancies. I do know one case where they noted that some numerous changes had been made to a draft return before it was finalised and when the return was subsequently investigated it turned out that the changes had been aimed at maximizing the available foreign tax credits in excess of what was allowable.
In relation to the cost-of-living payments errors were inevitable given that they would be made to an estimated 2.1 million recipients. For me, the bigger issue here is whether Inland Revenue is properly resourced. It estimated it required between 750 and 1,000 staff to deliver the payments. This is the equivalent of nearly 25% of its headcount of 4210 as of June 2021. The questions I’d be raising is why are so many additional staff required, particularly when you consider that Inland Revenue has just completed a $1.5 billion Business Transformation programme?
There’s also the question that there does seem to be a systemic error in relation to those payments made to individuals with overseas mailing addresses. In short, this is disappointing and shouldn’t really have happened. No doubt we’ll hear more about this as National is firing lots of questions on the matter at the Minister of Revenue, its MPs address on average somewhere between 80 and 100 written and oral to the Minister of Revenue each month.
Doomed, but an important point made
Moving on, last year I discussed a Taxation Review Authority (“the TRA”) case in which the taxpayer wanted assessments to be amended to reverse the effect of the over-taxation of a lump sum payment of $150,000 she had received from the Accident Compensation Corporation. This payment represented backdated compensation in respect of the previous compensation, which she should have received over the period April 2014 to September 2017. Instead, the back dated compensation was eventually paid as a single sum and subject to PAYE.
At the time, the taxpayer argued that this represented over-taxation as the payment should have been treated for tax purposes as having been derived on the accruals basis and spread over the income years to which the payment related. The Taxation Review Authority dismissed her challenge, but she has taken her case to the High Court who heard it late last month.
Her appeal was pretty much doomed from the start because currently there is no authority for the payment to be treated as she wishes, although conceptually I believe it’s a reasonable approach. And it transpired that it was a doomed appeal because the High Court declined to exercise its discretion to extend the time for her to file an appeal against the TRA decision.
But as I said, I think the point she is making is valid. Subsequent to the TRA case I obtained information from ACC under the Official Information Act about how many people had received backdated compensation.
And it turns out hundreds of people each year do receive such payments. I therefore took the matter up with Inland Revenue and Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee. I understand that Inland Revenue officials are currently reviewing the treatment of lump sum payments made by ACC and the Ministry of Social Development with a view to reporting to ministers in the coming months. I’ll update you on any developments as they emerge, but that does sound hopeful.
Global tax reform effort broad but it stutters
Yesterday, the OECD released its annual publication on tax policy reforms. This provides comparative information on tax reforms across countries, and this edition focuses on the tax reforms that were introduced or announced during 2021. This 2022 edition has the largest country coverage in its history. It covers the tax policy reforms made in 71 member jurisdictions of the OECD/G20 inclusive framework on the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting on international tax reform and includes all 38 OECD countries.
The report (not available as a download) breaks down into four parts. The first looks at the macroeconomic background and includes an overview of developments in the global economy. Part two presents the latest trends in tax revenues and in the composition of taxes and also identifies how these were affected by the arrival of the pandemic in 2020. Part three provides detailed description of those tax reforms that were introduced in calendar year 2021. Part four is a special feature which examines measures countries have introduced in response to rising energy prices and also has some policy recommendations.
The key policy trends identified are that personal income taxes and Social Security contributions reduced in most countries, as policymakers tried to boost economic growth and promote equity. That said, changes in personal income tax rates were less common than in previous years. Measures were targeted towards low- and middle-income households, particularly those with children aimed at promoting employment and providing in-work benefits.
Corporate income tax rates were cut in four countries. And the general convergence of corporate income tax rates across the countries continues. However, the big development last year was the agreement of 137 jurisdictions to the Two Pillar solution to reform international tax rules. Now, that seems to be stalling at the moment, but still, as I said, represents a major development.
With regard to VAT (Value Added Tax or GST), not many changes happened last year other than the reversal of most of the temporary VAT reductions introduced in the wake of the pandemic in 2020.
In the field of environment related taxes, the OECD report some progress, but at a slower pace than previously. The effect of carbon prices remains low overall because of the temporary cuts to energy taxes that started to come in with effect towards the end of 2021.
In relation to property taxes there were some measures introduced promoting progressivity and fairness. These predominantly involved tax rises either through increases in tax rates or base broadening measures. The bright-line test being extended from 5 to 10 years last year is one such example of that. The report points out that such measures are often trying to promote the efficient use of existing housing stock as well as greater fairness of property taxation, a long running theme of this podcast.
Part Four on the support measures introduced by governments to try and protect households and firms from the impacts of high energy prices is interesting reading. Here in Aoteaora New Zealand, the major energy issue has been the impact of petrol prices. Fortunately, because of our high renewable sector, we’ve been somewhat shielded from the impact of higher energy prices. But if you’ve seen reports coming out of Europe and Britain in particular, you will know that some horrific energy price rises are either on the horizon or are happening right now.
The OECD report recommends a shift towards more targeted measures aimed at helping those on lower incomes. This “may require improvements to existing transfer and social welfare systems.” So as often with a lot of the stuff we see coming out of the OECD it’s very interesting to see international trends and consider those in a New Zealand context.
Well, that’s all for this week. I’m Terry Baucher and you can find this podcast on my website www.baucher.tax or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening and please send me your feedback and tell your friends and clients.
Until next time kia pai te wiki, have a great week!
We frequently discuss Binding Rulings issued by Inland Revenue and a couple issued this week illustrate why you need to be thinking of potential tax issues in what might seem relatively routine transactions.
Binding Rulings are Inland Revenue’s interpretation of how the tax law applies to a particular arrangement. The whole purpose behind the binding ruling process is to provide greater clarity. Most of those we discuss are public Binding Rulings but there are also product binding rulings where a product provider wants to get clarity on the tax consequences of the particular product or transaction that’s happening.
Two such product rulings this week illustrate the point. The first one is for Sustainable Mobility Limited trading as Zilch. What Zilch does is provides electric vehicles to a business customer who uses the vehicles for business purposes. Under the arrangement, the driver–employee of the business customer to pay Zilch for the use of the vehicles for their private purposes.
Zilch was concerned about whether this arrangement might give rise to a fringe benefit for anyone who uses these vehicles. In the product ruling Inland Revenue confirmed subject to meeting all the conditions set out in the ruling the use of the vehicles would not be regarded as a fringe benefit.
The second ruling is in respect of a Westpac mortgage offset arrangement. Westpac customers can elect to use the balance of eligible transaction and savings accounts to offset against home loan accounts. And the idea is more efficient use of those funds will reduce the interest payable on the home loan accounts. The concern here was whether this would give rise to issues under the financial arrangements regime, the quantum physics of New Zealand tax where there are plenty of hidden tax traps.
Inland Revenue ruled that the offsetting in itself does not give rise to any income or expenditure under the financial arrangement fees. Furthermore, no requirement to deduct resident withholding tax on offset transactions arises. Technically, if there had been a payment for the purposes of the Income Tax Act does that represent a payment of interest? And therefore do resident withholding tax or non-resident withholding tax apply? Subject to meeting the conditions, no, according to the ruling.
Now, you can look at what we’re seeing here is just examples of the traps you can find in what appears at first sight to be relatively routine transactions. Offsetting credit balances to minimise interest, you would think, “Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense.” But then you drill into it and you hit the financial arrangements rules, and then suddenly there’s a number of issues you have to consider.
There are two key points. One, organisations offering products need to be careful about the tax consequences involved. Secondly, once they have done that asking Inland Revenue for clarity around the arrangements is a good first step. Product Rulings do involve a fee payable to Inland Revenue ad they can take a bit of time. They do provide certainty and you can probably use the ruling as a marketing tool as well. So as always, with taxes, plenty of unintended consequences to be mindful of.
House deposit unaffordability
Moving on, a few weeks back, I mentioned a report that had been produced by The Treasury, the Reserve Bank, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. In the form of the Housing Technical Working Group had published an assessment of the housing system with insights from the Hamilton-Waikato region.
Last Friday, Dominick Stevens, (formerly the Chief Economist at Westpac but now the Deputy Secretary and Chief Economic Adviser to Treasury), delivered the opening comments at the Economic Policy Centre’s Workshop on Housing Affordability at the University of Auckland.
He referenced the Housing Technical Working Group report and then expanded on Treasury’s conclusions were on the implications for policy.
His speech is very worthwhile reading because it does cover the whole ambit of economic policy on housing, with plenty of interesting insights. For example, apparently there’s very little relationship between where house prices have risen the most and the regions with the most population growth or the most acute housing shortages, which is an interesting conclusion in itself.
I think one of the real major insights generally is that high house prices and low interest rates affect deposit affordability more than mortgages for affordability or rent affordability. Basically, mortgages are affordable because we’re in a low interest regime, but accumulating the deposit in order to purchase a property is not so manageable and there are some fairly alarming looking graphs illustrating that particular issue.
Treasury’s conclusion was we already knew “that houses are income tax advantaged relative to many other forms of investment due partly to our lack of a comprehensive capital gains tax.” But then he expanded on this by noting
“…the more restricted the supply of land, the more that changes to the tax system will be capitalised into the value of urban land, rather than affecting housing supply or rents. Our Assessment concluded that tax distortions have added significantly to the price of scarce urban land in New Zealand. In the current context, reducing these tax distortions would make land cheaper, and would have less effect on rents or housing supply. Indeed, last year’s change to the tax treatment of some investment properties may have influenced urban property values.”
A couple of really interesting conclusions here. Firstly, tax settings really have made an impact on house prices and the changes last year may have eased those issues to some extent. When you consider that you’re only getting a full interest deduction for new builds, that directs investment towards concentrating housing in urban area and hopefully both brings down house prices and increases the supply of housing.
Plenty more to watch in this space and no doubt there will be some controversy about the matter. And there is actually a few more interesting papers from that conference which we will try and pick up on another time.
DIA still traveling at a snail’s pace
Tax agents and Accountants have been subject to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism provisions for a number of years. To be honest these measures weren’t entirely welcomed. In the run up to the introduction of the provisions in 2018 I was at a couple of conferences where the Department of Internal Affairs officials telling us what we must do and this was the way it was going to be, were greeted with a fair amount of scepticism, to put it mildly. One of the issues raised was how the compliance costs were going to fall on small businesses.
One of the other issues identified, but which at that time DIA officials did not have answers for, was in relation to tax transfers in two scenarios. One is where the taxpayers may have overpaid tax and they want to transfer that overpayment to a related party or associated party. The other scenario was transfers made by tax pooling agents, such as Tax Management New Zealand, Tax Traders and Tax Solutions. These are all companies to which you make tax payments which sit in a pool and are transferred across to Inland Revenue to meet tax liabilities.
We wanted to know whether these were subject to the AML regulations and initially, the advice was that they were subject to the AML regulations. We raised this issue more than four years ago questioning whether this was proper. Is that really what the AML legislation should be targeting?
And finally this week the Associate Minister of Justice granted a class exemption from most of the AML regulations for accounting practices (including accountants, bookkeepers, tax agents, and insolvency practitioners) carrying out “most” types of tax transfers under the Tax Administration Act 1994 or “most” types of tax transfers. The question of transfers from tax pooling companies is still to be decided.
This class exemptions is a good thing to have, but the question remains why has it taken four years to get this to this position? This was an issue identified, as I said, many years ago, before the legislation started to apply to accountants and tax agents. And yet it’s only now that particular matter, which is something we do all the time has been resolved.
So, one step forward, one step sideways. But you do wonder whether the agencies are resourced well enough to be managing these questions and what other businesses have been raising questions, saying, “Here’s a standard business practise which we think shouldn’t be covered. Can you give us a ruling on that?” We’ll have to wait and see.
Monarchs go tax-free
And finally, with the Queen’s death dominating the news headlines a bit more on the Royal finances. It’s quite fascinating to see all the rituals on the death of the Queen. For example, the King’s Duchy of Cornwall Estate, which is apparently worth £1 billion, passed automatically to Prince William. The Duchy of Cornwall goes back to 1337 and owns some centuries old assets including the Oval Cricket Ground in London as well as Dartmoor Prison.
Apparently, the total crown estate is worth £15.2 billion. As for the Queen’s own estate, this is quite substantial for example, she received £70 million free of inheritance tax from her mother back in 2002. Although the UK has inheritance tax, under an agreement reached with the Queen in 1993, it does not apply to sovereign-to-sovereign transfers. The majority of the Queen’s estate will pass to the King without inheritance tax.
However, if any bequest was made by the Queen to anyone other than King Charles, then inheritance tax at 40% would apply. It will be interesting to see what the Queen’s final inheritance tax bill will be.
Well, that’s all for this week. I’m Terry Baucher and you can find this podcast on my website www.baucher.tax or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening and please send me your feedback and tell your friends and clients.
Until next time kia pai te wiki, have a great week!
Inland Revenue regularly releases Technical Decision Summaries (TDS). These are summaries from its Adjudication Unit in relation to dispute cases of interest between Inland Revenue and taxpayers. These give a good indication of Inland Revenue thinking around particular topics and how it might react to a transaction.
TDS 22/21 released last week is particularly interesting. It involves a two-lot subdivision carried out on a property by a taxpayer. He had initially purchased the property when working offshore for the purpose of renovating and extending it to live in with their extended family. Once the property was purchased, the extended family moved into the dwelling and the taxpayer joined them later on his return to New Zealand.
He then started planning to extend the property, but it emerged that there were problems with drainage and asbestos. Instead, it was suggested that the taxpayer should subdivide the property into two lots, constructing a new dwelling on each lot. And that’s what happened, during which time he was working overseas and visiting intermittently. Once one of the new properties was constructed, he occupied it for eight months. Shortly after the subdivision was completed one property was sold and the taxpayer and his extended family continued to live in the other property for a further five years.
Inland Revenue argued that the taxpayer had entered into an undertaking or scheme with the dominant purpose of making a profit under section CB 3 of the Income Tax Act. This provision is outside the normal land tax provisions, which is slightly unusual. Inland Revenue also ran the argument that the property was acquired for the purpose of intentionally disposing of it under CB 6, which is within the land taxing provisions. The question arose whether there was relief available because it was a main home. And finally, Inland Revenue also raised the question whether the sale of the subdivided lot and the property was subject to GST.
It seems part of the issue here may have been Inland Revenue just didn’t believe what they were being told. The Technical Decision Summary reasons for the decision opens with a reminder that the onus of proof is on the taxpayer to prove that an assessment is wrong, why it is wrong and by how much it is wrong.
This case turned out to have a good outcome for the taxpayer, because the Adjudication Unit ruled that the taxpayer did not enter into an undertaking or scheme for the dominant purpose of making a profit. Therefore, the gain wasn’t taxable under section CB 3. The Adjudication Unit ruled the taxpayer acquired the property for the sole purpose and with the sole intention of creating a home for themselves and their extended family. Therefore, the sale of the second lot was not taxable under section CB 6. It followed that as the property had been occupied mainly as residential land prior to subdivision, an exclusion applied. Finally, the taxpayer did not carry out a taxable activity for the purposes of the Goods and Services Tax Act, so no GST applied to the transaction.
The taxpayer won on all points. But there are several interesting points here. First is that Inland Revenue even took the case and the arguments it ran. This transaction appears to have happened before the Bright-line test was introduced, the TDS isn’t clear about the timing. The attempt to apply section CB 3 is unusual.
Secondly it highlights that Inland Revenue is paying attention to just about any property transaction and it’s prepared to use all provisions that are available to it. The case is a reminder to keep good records. I think the taxpayer struggled initially because not enough evidence was available, but they were eventually able to persuade the Adjudication Unit of what had happened.
Tax professionals vote for a Capital Gains Tax
Moving on, the Technical Decision Summary does point to an ongoing strain within the tax system around the taxation of capital gains. In many jurisdictions that have capital gains taxes the issue we’ve just been discussing would be not on whether or not the transaction was taxable, which is an all-or-nothing proposition, but what proportion might be taxable.
It’s therefore interesting to see that at the Chartered Accountants of Australia and New Zealand’s National Tax Conference recently, a poll was conducted on the introduction of a capital comprehensive capital gains tax. The question was put would you prefer to have a comprehensive capital gains tax as proposed to the evolving status quo, which is actually a very generous description of the evolving state, still, to be frank.
(Photo by Richard McGill of PwC)
I wasn’t at the conference. I would have voted yes, although plenty of caveats around how we might go about it. It’s also tempting to respond, “Well, that is a lot of self-interest by accountants voting for such a measure.” I know that I’ve seen similar comments pointing out when I raise the issue that of course I would support it because I get extra work out of that. I find it ironic to be accused of acting out of self-interest when the flipside of it equally applies people who don’t want a capital gains tax would also be saying so out of self-interest. Self-interest arguments cut both ways, in my view.
I do happen to think that self-interest is a problem in the tax system around this whole area. It’s very difficult to see how parliamentarians owning substantial capital assets are going to ever going to vote for something which is directly against their own self-interests.
The feedback from the CAANZ conference was that it’s necessary to keep our tax system comprehensive and robust. And it would actually simplify quite a lot of measures that we see right now. For example, if you had a capital gains tax, you wouldn’t have to work through the bright line test and its various iterations. You could remove the foreign investment fund rules, another set of rules which are complex and not well understood. And you would also probably remove, or certainly reduce the need for measures such as restricting interest deductions. This has been introduced partly as a response to the absence of a capital gains tax.
In my view, there’s a lot of distortions in the tax system because we don’t tax capital gains, and we are seeing more and more of that. At last year’s International Fiscal Association’s annual conference many of the issues we were debating really revolved around the strains on the edges of the tax system produced by not taxing capital gains.
A CGT is not going to be popular with politicians or for those who would be affected. But the rest of the world manages these strains. So, to pretend that we can get by without a CGT and continue the current incoherent approach to taxing capital gains, is a position that just simply isn’t sustainable in the long term.
Updates on global tax coordination
Now, moving on, in international tax news the OECD released its latest corporate tax statistics. There’s a lot to consider here which I’ll discuss next week.
The OECD also released data relating to the latest Mutual Agreement Procedure statistics covering 127 jurisdictions and practically all the mutual assistance cases worldwide. These Mutual Agreement Procedure cases arise when two or more tax jurisdictions want to resolve the tax treatment of a transaction or entity where each jurisdiction thinks they have priority. Transfer pricing issues are often involved.
According to the OECD, approximately 13% more Mutual Agreement Procedure cases were closed in 2021 than in 2020. But fewer new cases started this year, which is a small, unusual trend given the internationalisation of the global economy. But these Mutual Agreement Procedure cases do take some time to resolve, on average, about the 32 months for transfer pricing cases and 21 months for other cases.
But amidst all this, there’s some good news, including an award for Inland Revenue which together with Ireland was awarded the prize for the most effective caseload management. The most improved jurisdiction was Germany, which closed an additional 144 cases with positive outcomes – that is, the matter was fully resolved.
These awards seem a bit of fun, but actually it’s a pretty important matter because with the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting and the hopefully soon introduction of the Two-Pillar international tax agreement, the role of Mutual Agreement Procedures in resolving disputes is going to be important. It’s encouraging to see jurisdictions are making progress and cooperating better
Paying tax and the right to vote
And finally this week, the Make it 16 win in the Supreme Court over the potential voting rights of under 18 caused quite a stir. David Seymour of ACT jumped in with a rather ill thought out comment “We don’t want 120,000 more voters who pay no tax voting for lots more spending.”
From the first time a child uses their pocket money to buy an ice cream and dairy, they’re paying tax. It’s called GST, which at over $26 billion is a quarter of the Government’s tax revenue. And as I pointed out on Twitter, lots and lots and lots of under-18s pay GST.
(The total of local government rates is an estimate. It appears the true figure is just over $7.3 billion)
The Make It 16 group made an Official Information Act request to Inland Revenue about how much tax 16- and 17-year-olds pay. And according to Inland Revenue over 94,600 16 -and 17-year olds paid a total of $82 million in income tax during the year ended 31 March 2022. That’s not an insubstantial amount of money (and doesn’t take into consideration the GST they also paid).
Given that 16 is the age of consent and 16 year-olds may drive, I don’t see much logic in saying that’s too young to vote. The kids are all right in my book.
Until next time kia pai te wiki, have a great week!
After the dramas of last week’s tax bill being introduced and then withdrawn within 24 hours, it’s been a calmer week in tax. On Thursday the tax bill was reintroduced without the offending provisions relating to GST on fund manager services. Interestingly, there has been some more measured discussion as to the merits of that proposal, and I do wonder whether a government might introduce an amended proposal at a later date, perhaps this time with any GST raised use to boost incentives for lower income Kiwi savers, such as the proposal made by the Tax Working Group.
Elsewhere this week, I got involved in some interesting debates over the question of whether the tax thresholds should be raised. My view is yes, but on the Today FM show, Max Rashbrooke made the alternative case for better targeting of low-middle income earners. I agree with host Tova O’Brien that tax is going to be a big issue in next year’s election. And like many of us she was looking forward to seeing what the tax policies of the various parties would be.
Whatever policies we’ll see next year will be they’re almost all certain to address the issue of raising productivity in New Zealand and what part tax and economic policy will play in achieving that goal. And that is the subject of an interesting paper released by Inland Revenue just a couple of weeks back. This is the first long-term insights briefing which public service agencies are required under the Public Service Act 2020 to publish at least once every three years. These briefings are designed to provide information on medium and long-term trends, risks and opportunities and provide, “impartial analysis on possible policy options”.
Inland Revenue’s chosen subject was Tax, foreign investment and productivity. A really meaty topic and the whole paper runs to 111 pages. As the briefing explains, it examines how New Zealand’s tax settings are likely to affect incentives for firms to invest into New Zealand and also benchmark our tax settings against those in other countries.
The initial evidence is that, compared with other OECD countries, we appear to have relatively high taxes on inbound investments. This then gets down to the question whether those tax settings are
“likely to mean higher costs of capital (or hurdle rates of return) for investment into New Zealand than for investment into most other OECD countries. High taxes on inbound investment have the potential to reduce economic efficiency and be costly to New Zealanders by reducing New Zealand’s capital stock and labour productivity.”
I think economists would be looking at this paper with some great interest as well. Now, the OECD analysis that is often used for comparison purposes looks at company tax provisions. But this paper also notes that there are other broader tax issues that should be taken into consideration. And when you take a broader perspective, maybe New Zealand isn’t as much as an outlier as it first appears.
What the briefing is intended to do is, “initiate a process of discussion on these sorts of issues.” The briefing considers several possible tax changes, namely:
a cut in the company tax rate
accelerated depreciation provisions
inflation indexation of the tax base
a higher thin capitalisation rule safe harbour
an allowance for corporate equity
special industry-specific or firm-specific incentives, and
a dual income tax system.
These measures are all possible ways of lowering the costs of capital. And some of those can also promote tax neutrality. However, there is unlikely to be a single best option, and choices between the options will ultimately depend on what weightings are given to the possible objectives of reforms. Of course, politics comes into play, for example, a lowering corporate company income tax rates for non-resident investors isn’t going to be terribly popular because that might mean higher tax rates for individuals. Therefore, there are these series of tradeoffs that have to be considered.
The briefing is accompanied by 45 pages of appendices. Some of the papers referenced are quite interesting. One in particular caught my eye, was prepared in 2016 by a couple of American economists relating to accelerated depreciation allowances, a measure that’s often promoted. As there’s a wealth of data available in America, these economists and analysed data for over 120,000 firms.
They presented three findings. First, accelerated depreciation raised investment in eligible capital relative to ineligible capital by 10.4% between 2001 and 2004 and then by 16.9% when it was reintroduced between 2008 and 2010. Their second finding was that small firms responded 95% more to that incentive for accelerated depreciation than larger firms. I think this is particularly important in the New Zealand context. Finally, firms responded strongly whether these policies of depreciation in generated immediate cash flows, but not necessarily when cash flows were in the future. In other words, firms were very interested in short term quick return investment. Now, given that I think our smaller firms are under-capitalised and we have lower productivity, obviously one of the points for future discussion from this briefing is about the role of accelerated depreciation.
Now, the object of the briefing isn’t to propose a single solution. It is, “…to start a conversation on what people see as the most important objectives for reform and whether particular reforms are worth considering further.”
When Inland Revenue initially put out an issues paper saying this was the proposed subject of its briefing it asked for responses. A few replied raising the issue of how the absence of a capital gains tax just reduces the coherence of the tax system, and there may be productivity concerns because of the light taxation of property. The briefing addressed these issues as follows:
“The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has advised that briefings should not focus on issues that have already been subject to considerable analysis. Capital gains tax was considered by the recent tax working group and the government decided against a general tax on capital gains. Therefore, we, the briefing, are not making a capital gains tax on property or a more general tax on capital gains a central focus because it has been the subject of recent debate and policy consideration.”
The problem with this approach is this is a meant to be a long-term insights briefing, and taking capital gains out of the picture immediately circumscribes its value. And by the by, in most cases, any foreign investors are subject to capital gains tax in their own country. Capital gains tax is a factor anyway for offshore investors and so maybe we should be factoring it in here.
To be fair, once you’ve gone through the paper and you understand what is driving it, the absence of commentary on capital gains tax although disappointing, shouldn’t be a distraction from what is a very interesting and valuable paper with plenty to digest. I do recommend reading this as it contains some very interesting issues, such as the idea of a dual income tax system which individually could be the subject of a podcast.
FBT reviewed
Moving on Inland Revenue has also released its 49-page Fringe Benefit Tax regulatory stewardship review. This is something else required under the Public Sector Act 2020 which requires regulatory stewardship reviews to ensure that policy and operational responsibilities are effective and operating as intended. Last week I mentioned how the new tax bill reintroduced this week gives an exemption from FBT for the provision of public transport. I noted the current treatment as an example where one set of tax policies probably doesn’t sit well with a wider set of objectives
FBT was chosen for review because it hasn’t been fully reviewed since some minor changes were made nearly 20 years ago. And as the review notes, over time, stakeholders have raised problems with the design and operation of FBT. The review is seen primarily as a diagnostic exercise investigating three questions:
Does the design of FBT meet the policy intent?
What is the employer and business experience of complying with FBT?
How does Inland Revenue administer FBT?
The review also considers whether FBT as in its current format is fit for the future, taking current workforce trends into account with more and more people working from home now.
The summary conclusions are that it does perform its primary task of ensuring that remuneration from employment is taxed, whether it’s paid in cash or provided by way of a non-cash benefit. FBT is one of those taxes which is as much designed to support the tax base by tackling anti avoidance behaviour as well as raise tax. But as the review then notes
“However, it is not clear that FBT is a tax that functions well. Consistently, views expressed to the review team were that FBT is complex and that it imposes a high administrative and compliance burden relative to the tax at stake.”
There was also this interesting feedback “many interview participants felt that any intuitive connection with remuneration had been lost.”
FBT was introduced in 1985 to counter an avoidance of PAYE on salaries by providing people with non-cash benefits. Initially it had a very important role, particularly since back then tax the top tax rate was still 66%. However, a lot has changed in the last 37 years.
One of the main points that comes out of the report is that submitters feel FBT is not being complied with by all businesses and it’s not being enforced by Inland Revenue. This is seen as unfair by those who shoulder the compliance burden. The official response is “Inland Revenue is unable to comment on the amount of non-compliance with the FBT rules using existing data, although the use of START at its new computer will enable a more timely and targeted compliance approach.”
That is a hell of an admission. The review then points out if non-compliance with FBT rules is perceived to be risk free, then that perception could undermine the integrity of the tax system as a whole. Therefore, this risk needs to be addressed.
The review then puts up a couple of proposals to do so. Firstly, which many might see as a bureaucratic answer, commission a policy project to act on the findings of the review. This would be to conduct an enquiry into fundamental reform, for example moving benefits-in-kind into the PAYE system. That was something not supported by interviewees. Secondly, “requiring operations to take steps to address the concerns raised about compliance and enforcement”, which might be more crudely and accurately expressed as “Do your damn job Inland Revenue”. And that is where I would begin.
We probably should have a review of fringe benefit tax and how it operates and whether the current system is fit for purpose. It definitely is compliance intensive. And there’s also this widespread perception of non-compliance, particularly in in in in regard to the definition of work-related vehicle and the rise of the twin-cab ute and whether such vehicles are genuine work-related vehicles. At the same time, I believe you have to enforce the current law because the perception might arise that the integrity of the tax system is being undermined. That’s actually in breach of official’s duties under the Tax Administration Act. I think it does no harm to show that compliance of the rules is required. Plus, it might raise a little bit of extra revenue.
There is some interesting commentary about how much revenue FBT does raise. For example, in the 2019/20 tax year, the Inland Revenue collected $592 million of FBT, which is 24% up on the $479 million collected in the 2009/10 tax year. However, back in the early 1990s FBT revenue was close to 5% of PAYE revenue and around 3% of direct income tax revenue. But now it’s closer to 1.6% of total PAYE revenue and about 0.9% of total direct income tax revenue.
FBT revenue rose steadily between its introduction and 1989 but then significantly reduced between 1990 and 1995. This decline may be the result of changes to the definition of benefits subject to FBT, but it may also reflect employers responding to its advent and switching to cash only salary packages. There may also have been some tax planning around trying to mitigate FBT.
FBT is paid by a relatively small number of taxpayers. Nearly 69% is paid by employers of 101 or more people. And in fact, that according to Inland Revenue data. Employees with 501 or more employees represent just 2% of all FBT filers, but 41.4% of all FBT paid for the year ended 31st March 2020.
For me the key takeaway here is that Inland Revenue really needs to begin to put some resources into management of FBT. I have heard commentary that it didn’t feel it was worthwhile, but there are spin-off effects. As noted, the perception of the integrity of the tax system is undermined. And also, there’s the wider policy objectives we mentioned. If FBT isn’t being monitored, how does that fit with the wish to reduce emissions? If it turns out people think, well, actually, work-related vehicles don’t pay FBT, then people might continue to use relatively inefficient vehicles. We’ve seen, by the way, with the green car discounts, how much an incentive in terms of cashback has made a difference with new registrations. Moving FBT perhaps to an emissions-based charge such as they do in Ireland and the UK, might have some interesting implications and help drive down emissions.
One of the drivers behind the long-term inside’s briefing is that changes to the tax settings will drive foreign investment. It’s not a particularly revolutionary insight. There’s no doubt tax affects investment decisions.
Tax affects investment decisions
A very clear example of that, in my view, is when we consider the taxation of residential investment property, which I discussed with RNZ’s The Panel on Wednesday. This stemmed from an Official Information Act request I made to Inland Revenue asking for details of the number of taxpayers returning residential property investment income, how many reported net positive income, how many reported losses and what was the net income returned.
I shared my information with Geraden Cann of Stuff who ran the story.
In summary for the year ended 31st March 2019, 36% of all those filing individual tax returns and reporting rental income incurred a loss. For the year ended 31st March 2020 that proportion fell to 32%, and in the year ended 31st March 2021, it fell further to 27%. As you can see in the year ended 31st March 2021 about 240,000 people reported rental income with 173,500 in profit but 63,600 with losses amounting to $358 million. The net income rental income reported for the year was $1.428 billion. According to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s statistics, the valuation of residential investment property as of 31st March 2021 was $369 billion. That represents a pretty poor 0.4% return pre-tax.
So why are investors investing in residential property then? Because that return is not much better than you might have got if you put your money in the bank. The obvious answer to that is hoped-for tax-free capital gains plays a part in their decision-making. that. To be fair, that’s an understandable investment decision. If property prices are going to rise 20%, and you’re not being taxed on that 20% gain and you’re generating sufficient income to manage your costs, which is what two thirds of taxpayers seem to manage, then that’s not an unreasonable investment decision.
But at some point you have to realise that investment, which does beg the question which has been addressed in another academic paper, can you actually say that you did not purchase with an intent of sale. How otherwise does the investment makes sense without having to sell it?
I also asked for a breakdown of the number of residential properties held. Inland Revenue ‘doesn’t have comprehensive information’ so it responded
“We do, however, hold partial information based on the IR3R calculation worksheets used by a subset of around 60,000 property owners who use this form as an input to their filing. Proportions calculated from this subgroup of taxpayers for the 2020-21 tax year are provided in Table 2.
The IR3R calculation worksheet tends to be used by unincorporated taxpayers (individuals or trusts) who are likely to have smaller investment portfolios. The supplied proportions are not necessarily representative of the wider picture incorporating all residential rental taxpayers and all entity structures.”
As you might expect, 25% of all those holding between one and three properties report a loss. The proportion holding between 4 and 9 drops to 0.42%. Quite remarkably, among those with ten or more properties, 0.1% do report losses. One suspects that group are extremely heavily leveraged, and probably these positions are likely to change as interest limitation rules take effect.
Context
To put this in context, the Financial Markets Authority publishes a KiwiSaver Annual Report. This details the number of KiwiSaver schemes, the value of those schemes and actually the income reported and tax paid by all KiwiSaver schemes. The total value of KiwiSaver schemes was $81.6 billion and the total tax paid by KiwiSaver schemes was $474.6 million.
As I mentioned, the net pre-tax profit for the year ended 31st March 2021 for investment properties was $1.42 billion. Assuming a maximum 33% tax rate, that would equate to roughly $470 mln in tax. In fact, it’s almost certainly a lot lower because of not every taxpayer with investment property would be taxed at 33%.
When you look at the amount of capital invested in housing, $369 billion and the amount of capital invested in KiwiSaver, $81.6 billion, there’s approximately 4.5 times more capital invested in housing. But the taxable returns are so much lower that relatively speaking, they’re a quarter of KiwiSaver returns so the tax take ends up being broadly similar.
A really big question therefore arises around the efficiency and allocation of capital. That is why it is a bit disappointing Inland Revenue’s long-term insights briefing didn’t address that matter. But I understand that Treasury has been looking the housing issue and has come to the conclusion that tax settings have been a real driver of house price inflation. As I said on RNZ people have made rational decisions to invest in property but those also come with consequences.
And in my view, one of those consequences is inefficient allocation of capital. We also have rising inequality and essentially the arrival of a landed gentry, which means that if you do not have parents or family that can help you into housing, you’re likely to be unable to ever get on the property ladder. That’s not a particularly great scenario to have and coming back to the point Tova O’Brien made is something that next year we should be seeing the politicians talk about the sort of tax policies which address all these issues.
Revisiting 1952
And finally, our condolences to the Royal Family on the passing of the Queen. Just to put her 70-year reign in context, the population of New Zealand in 1952, when she became Queen, was just under 2 million. The Government’s total tax receipts for the year ended 31 March 1952 were just over £200 million or approximately 25% of GDP.
Some interesting taxes used to apply back then including an ‘Amusement tax’ which collected £308,000. The top tax rate was 60% and there was also Social Security in addition. Income tax represented 49% of all tax collections (it’s now nearly 67%). Incidentally, Land Tax, Death and Gift Duties, all now repealed, collected more than £9 million or 4.6% of the tax take. Taxes change over time. But it’s interesting to be coming back to the question of taxing capital. We didn’t have a capital gains tax in 1952, but we did tax capital. Maybe the pendulum is swinging back again.
Well, that’s all for this week. I’m Terry Baucher and you can find this podcast on my website www.baucher.tax or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening and please send me your feedback and tell your friends and clients.
Until next time kia pai te wiki, have a great week!
A new tax bill causes a massive storm but what happens next?
Also a brief run-through of what other tax measures are in the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2022-23, Platform Economy and Remedial Matters) Bill. (TL:DR – a lot!)
On the face of it this was a provision to address a technical issue which had developed over time where fund managers were applying different treatments to how they determined what proportion of the fees they provided were taxable supplies subject to GST and what portion represented GST exempt financial services.
The proposal determined by Inland Revenue was to standardise the approach and apply GST service and fees. This would have taken effect from the 1st of April 2026. We’re therefore talking about a measure three years in the future, but which would have netted an estimated $225 million a year in GST. That in itself probably wouldn’t have caused many issues except the Regulatory Impact Statement which accompanies the Bill, included modelling by the Financial Markets Authority which on the assumption that the increase in GST would be fully passed on to KiwiSaver fund members, KiwiSaver balances would be reduced by an estimated $103 billion by 2070.
And then the fun kicked off. There clearly was quite a bit of misunderstanding about this measure with some people thinking the Government would be charging GST on KiwiSaver balances. The Government was taken completely by surprise and the furore was such that it decided to abandon the proposal within 24 hours of announcing it, which is some form of record. It certainly made for an entertaining 24 hours in tax. You can hear more about what happened in this week’s edition of the Spinoff’s podcast When the Facts Change where Bernard Hickey and I discuss the background to the proposal and how it fits into the history of tax reform since 1984.
But it should be noted that the particular issue of an inconsistency of approach by fund managers still remains. So, what’s going to happen now? Probably Inland Revenue will have to negotiate with fund managers and come to some form of agreement over what proportion of fees it deems to be acceptable to be treated as taxable supplies. This was what happened back in 2001, but that agreement has long expired. Such an agreement is going to take some time, although maybe negotiations already started. We’ll have to wait and see how that pans out.
Ironically the GST on fund management proposal was a relatively minor part of the Bill, although it would have had the biggest single tax effect. The rest of the Bill, as its name implies, covers a whole range of matters, including the gig economy, more GST issues, cross-border workers, fringe benefit, and the bright-line test to name a few.
Addressing the Platform Economy
A number of reporting and other tax issues have arisen around economic activity facilitated by digital platforms. That is where an app connects buyers and sellers and includes accommodation services such as Airbnb and transportation services, such as the ride sharing apps, Uber and Zoomy and Ola together with other professional services provided through digital platforms.
The Bill intends to ensure Inland Revenue has better access to information about income earned by sellers using digital platforms based in New Zealand or offshore. These provisions build on proposals developed through consultation by the OECD. Inland Revenue will get greater information and it will also share that information with foreign tax authorities where it relates to non-residents.
The Bill also wants to maintain the sustainability of the GST system. Digital platforms will be required to collect GST on services provided through them in New Zealand. This will be done by extending the rules that currently apply to imported digital services and low value imported goods. These will now apply to accommodation, ride sharing and food and beverage delivery services all currently provided through digital platforms.
There is a proposed flat rate credit scheme intended to reduce the compliance costs for those accommodation hosts and drivers who are not required to register for GST because the value of the services they provide over 12 months is less than $60,000. The GST changes will come into effect from 1st April 2024 and the net impact is expected to be around $37 million per annum.
These changes reflect the growing impact of the digital economy and the moves by tax authorities to ensure they know what’s going on and close potential gaps in loss of revenue may be arising because some of this may be happening under the table. It also reinforces something we see a lot of already and which we’ll see more of, and that is information sharing with other jurisdictions as appropriate.
We’re still working through the impact of COVID-19. And one of the areas where I’ve seen quite a bit of interesting work develop is in relation to cross-border workers. In the wake of the pandemic, we’ve seen a lot of people return to New Zealand from overseas. In many cases these returnees continue to carry on working remotely for their previous employer. This pattern of working remotely has expanded greatly as a result of the pandemic, and I don’t think that’s going to change significantly. But it was also another one of the situations where tax legislation and reporting and withholding tax obligations haven’t kept up with developments.
The Bill therefore has measures to deal with cross-border workers. The PAYE, FBT and employer superannuation contribution tax rules are very strictly applied, but they are incredibly inflexible. They really don’t take into account that employees might be working in New Zealand for non-resident employers and have very different compliance circumstances to those employees of New Zealand resident employers.
The Bill’s proposals acknowledge that such people coming in and working remotely for overseas employers justify taking a different approach to help reduce compliance costs for those cross-border workers. The key amendments are to allow more flexible application of the PAYE rules in specific circumstances. For example, it might allow PAYE to be paid annually. There’s also a repeal of a little used PAYE bond provision.
Alongside those rules are changes to the non-resident contractor rules which relate to the performance of services by non-resident contractors in New Zealand. These are essentially a withholding tax which operates to try and manage the tax risk of people coming in for a short period to perform contract work on a project and then return overseas. Without these non-resident contracting rules, no tax would be deducted. These rules have been in place for a very long time. Apparently, they were first introduced in the wake of the ‘Think Big’ projects of the late seventies and early eighties. They also apply quite extensively to the film industry as well which is where I first encountered them.
The non-resident contractor rules are being tweaked to update them and manage the compliance costs for those subject to them. Again, this reflects a trend that had been developing but has accelerated in the wake of the pandemic. The changes for the PAYE and non-resident contracting rules take effect from 1st April next year.
Notwithstanding what went on with the GST on managed funds issue, there’s quite a bit of other GST matters addressed in the Bill. These include provisions to address issues in the GST apportionment and adjustment rules. These are intended to reduce the compliance costs these rules impose and supposedly better align with current taxpayer practises.
There will be a principal purpose test for goods and services acquired for $10,000 or less GST exclusive. This would enable a registered person to claim a full GST input tax deduction. The other key change is to allow GST registered persons to elect to treat certain assets that have mainly private or exempt use, such as dwellings as if they only had a private or exempt use.
That latter change addresses an issue which has popped up from time to time in is that people may have made claimed GST as part of a home office deduction. If so, then potentially when that property is sold, is it therefore not the case that some portion of the sale will be subject to GST? This was a matter which technically existed, but probably wasn’t being addressed by many taxpayers and advisors.
This issue is generally covered by the GST apportionment and adjustment rules which are very complex and have high compliance costs. Under these rules if you have claimed an input tax deduction based on the estimated use business use of an asset, you are meant to track the business use of the asset. Where the actual use is different from the estimated business use, then you calculate and return an adjustment at the end of the tax year.
This is quite an involved process, and this measure is intended to try and simplify the matter. It’s a sensible change, in my view, which reflects the fact that although GST is a very broad-based tax, you can’t actually really describe it as a simple tax in its operation. There are all these issues around its margins regarding what represents business use, what proportions become taxable and therefore subject to GST, etc. And as we saw in relation to the GST and fund management services, the sums involved can be quite large actually. These proposed changes to try and simplify matters and will take effect from 1st April 2023.
I frequently discuss tax and environmental issues and I’m therefore pleased to see a proposal in the Bill for an exemption from fringe benefit tax (FBT) for certain public transport fares which are subsidised by an employer. This will take effect from 1st April 2023.This is a good example of tax being used as a behavioural change and comes about by looking at the bigger picture of how we address greenhouse gas emissions and what role can tax have in that. The Tax Working Group identified that the FBT treatment of parking is inconsistent and in many cases is not subject to FBT. By contrast, FBT is applied to subsidised public transport.
When you step back and take a wider environmental policy perspective about this, what’s happening is the opposite of what you really would want. The policy should be to tax parking to help reduce emissions and encourage the use of public transport. That’s what this measure is intended to do. It’s a very welcome move which is estimated to cost about $9 million a year. This would also appear to be a good example of how environmentally friendly changes can be achieved at relatively low cost.
Outside of the main policy issues we just discussed, the Bill, as is typical, contains a whole heap of provisions relating to many other issues. For example, there’s a number of changes in relation to the Bright-line test and interest limitation rules introduced last year.
Unsurprisingly, given the complexity of those rules, we are seeing a number of tweaks and clarifications about how they operate. One such example relates to when relief is available under the bright line test, when land is transferred on the death of the owner to the executor of or beneficiaries of the estate. Such a transfer is meant to be exempt, and the Bill has provisions making that clear.
There are some other provisions relating to rollover relief, that is when the bright-line test does not apply to transfers between related parties in certain circumstances. Most of those amendments will take effect the day after the Bill receives Royal Assent, which will probably be in late March next year. But some pleasingly have a retrospective effect back to when the changes to the Bright-line test and the interest limitation rule were announced on 27th March 2021. I fully expect we’ll see more such technical changes in the future, possibly even with some Supplementary Order Papers to this particular tax bill.
Another provision deals with a potential issue with the foreign trust regime and the exemption for foreign trusts whereby income from a non-New Zealand source is not taxable in New Zealand so long as it’s not distributed to a New Zealand resident. In some instances, a trust can make use of that provision but not have to comply with the foreign trust, registration and disclosure rules. The Bill therefore has provisions addressing that issue and some other minor technical matters applying to foreign trusts.
The recently announced build to rent exemption from interest limitation is also part of this bill. According to the supporting Regulatory Impact Statement this will cost $2.1 million if applied to existing build to rent assets.
Then inevitably, as in any of these tax bills, there’s a whole heap of other little remedial matters tidying up technical issues that have arisen around student loans, financial arrangements, provisional tax look-through companies, dual resident companies and more.
Ordinarily, this type of tax bill would barely get a mention in the press, so this week’s drama was quite unexpected. Now the dust has settled, it’s worth remembering that the issue around inconsistent treatment of GST on fund management services still remains. Ultimately, the Government backdown is another example of how short-term politics will nearly always trump longer-term policy.
Well, that’s all for this week. I’m Terry Baucher and you can find this podcast on my website www.baucher.tax or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening and please send me your feedback and tell your friends and clients.
Until next time kia pai te wiki, have a great week!
The first instalment of Provisional tax for the March 2023 income year is due on Monday. Now, as most people know, if provisional tax is not paid on time, late payment penalties and use of money interest will apply. The interest rate on underpaid tax will increase from Tuesday 30th August from 7.28% to 7.96%. On the face of it, there’s a lot of incentive to make sure your payment is made on time. The rate, incidentally, for overpaid tax which has been zero for quite some time now, will rise to 1.22%.
There’s been consistent tweaking of the use of money interest rules to try and make it easier for businesses, particularly smaller businesses. The rules are different where the provisional tax exceeds $60,000 for the year.
And the last changes in 2017 were designed so that if taxpayers made the payments they were required to make, then use of money interest would not apply until terminal tax date, which for most taxpayers is 7th February following the end of the tax year in question, or the following 7th April if they are on a tax agent’s listing.
The requirement was that they had to make the payment in full and on time, and this actually led to a few problems because taxpayers sometimes missed their payments by one or two days or even might be out by $10 or so. What has emerged since 2017 is that the number of taxpayers who unintentionally paid short or late was underestimated by Inland Revenue at the time the changes were brought in. Consequently, a large number of taxpayers had to pay use of money interest and late payment penalties.
What Inland Revenue have determined is “in these circumstances, the application of use of money, interest and late payment penalties is not proportionate to the offence committed.” It considers it is “appropriate” to allow taxpayers to retain the safe harbour concession for use of money interest even if they miss a payment. So, the interest rules have been changed rules again with effect from the start of the current tax year.
What the change means is you won’t suffer use of any interest if you miss a payment or there’s a short fall on your tax payment. You won’t be charged 7.96% on the underpaid tax until your terminal tax payment date. However, late payment penalties will still apply. These are 1% of the underpayment immediately and a further 4% if the tax has still not been seven days later for a maximum 5% penalty. (Inland Revenue has now done away with the monthly 1% late payment penalty on top of the initial penalties).
It’s been pointed out to me that there’s probably an opportunity for someone to play a few games and arbitrage their funds by accepting the late payment penalty charge but avoiding the high use of money interest charge. No doubt some taxpayers will do that.
We don’t actually know how much use of money interest the Inland Revenue charges, but pretty substantial amounts are involved. We know, for example, that Covid-19 related interest write offs over a two-year period amounted to $104 million. At a rough guess taxpayers could be paying $100 million or more in use of money interest annually. Measures that help them relieve that charge ought to be to be welcomed.
The case for a residential land value tax
Moving on, last week I discussed the report on housing from the Housing Technical Working Group, a combination of the Treasury, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. The report raised the question of the role our tax settings may have played in house price inflation. This generated quite a bit of interest and commentary and thank you to everyone who contributed.
But as I said last week, the issue around how our tax settings work in relation to property isn’t going to go away. It’s an issue that sooner or later has to be grasped. And this week, Bernard Hickey who has an excellent Substack, The Kaka, did a very detailed post on the whole question of our lack of training and productivity, our need for substantial numbers of. migrant workers and how that intersected with the under taxation of residential land.
Bernard’s post pulled together a lot of conclusions I’d reached during my time in the Government’s Small Business Council between 2018 and 2019. I grew quite concerned at the lack of training, particularly among small businesses and the extensive need for migrant workers coming in. What is well established is that Aotearoa-New Zealand has the highest use of temporary migrant labour in the OECD and simultaneously it also has one of the highest diasporas in the OECD. In other words, our skilled people are moving overseas and we’re bringing in relatively low skilled people and this is causing a whole number of tensions.
As Bernard notes we really need to rethink the matter of how we deal with this approach because this long term, it is not economically prosperous for us all. As he concluded:
“All roads were always going to lead back to changing those investment incentives through a new tax that gives the Government the resources to invest in productivity-enhancing physical and social infrastructure. That tax would also radically change the incentives for businesses and individual investors….
In my view, a Capital Gains Tax would be too politically toxic, complicated and slow to break the log jam. The case for a residential land value tax, a much simpler, faster and more politically possible option is a simple and very-low-rate infrastructure levy or tax on residentially-zoned land values that is calculated annually from land value measures in council-maintained databases.”
This, by the way, is very similar to what Susan St John and I have been promoting for some time, the Fair Economic Return, and we and Bernard are coming at it from pretty much the same place.
Bernard then puts some detailed numbers around this. He estimates a 0.5% tax on residential land values would raise an extra $6 billion and effectively increase the Government’s tax take from 30% of GDP to 32% of GDP. Bernard also considers the revenue raised from such a tax should be
“hypothecated into a housing and climate infrastructure fund jointly administered on a region-by-region basis by central Government and councils, with the aim of using those funds to achieve affordable housing and net zero transport and housing emissions by 2050. affordable housing in net zero transport and housing emissions by 2050.”
I support this approach. We’ve just seen the flood damage in Nelson which is after about $80 to $85 million of damage from last year’s flooding. This year’s event is even bigger, and the damage is estimated to be well over $100 million. We could also be looking at similar events on a regular basis. Those sums are way too big for homeowners and local councils to manage by themselves. Central government is going to have to get involved.
Climate change is happening right now. It is no longer something in the distance and we need to start addressing those changes. Local councils cannot afford to be incurring $100 million in repairs each year. That is simply not sustainable. Bear in mind the chief executive of the country’s largest insurer has recently said premiums in higher risk areas will become incredibly expensive to the fact they become unaffordable.
A whole number of issues are starting to coalesce around climate change and around the taxation of capital. These will force a change on how we approach our current taxation system. What Bernard is proposing ties in with the Fair Economic Return Susan St John and I are promoting. In our view it is a fairer approach as it widens our tax base and as Bernard points out, starts to remove distortions to how we currently approach investment.
A $1 bln shortfall
Also related to the question of climate change, there was a report in the Herald this week about the Ministry of Transport’s forecast that the National Land Transport Fund is likely to have a shortfall of $926 million over the next three years. The shortfall is mainly as a result of the Government’s decision to cut fuel taxes and road user charges. However, there’s also a decline in driving going on as well, which may be related to the pandemic. Those figures were prepared in April and didn’t take into account the extension of the cuts to January. This shortfall will be made up out of general taxation.
The Government has taken a short-term decision to help the cost of living, but inadvertently it points to something that’s fundamentally flawed about how the National Land Transport Fund is presently funded. The reliance on fuel taxes encourages more driving which until we get to a fully electric vehicle fleet, that is not helpful, as transport emissions are one of the biggest chunks of our carbon emissions.
Transport is also one of the areas where we probably can do something quite quickly with the right incentives to encourage switching away from using internal combustion engines to hybrids and electric vehicles obviously, public transport, walking, cycling, scooters. All those alternatives are available now in the urban environment and could make a huge difference.
This is another area where governments have kicked the can down the road, but now they need to address the issue of how we fund the National Land Transport Fund because it’s how the maintenance of our roads is funded. We have to devise a new means of funding it, probably as readers have suggested higher road user charges on all vehicles including electric vehicles. Here’s another example of change in our tax system being driven by a number of factors, including the climate.
Refugee evacuation
Finally, I mentioned earlier my time on the Government’s Small Business Council in 2018-19. Our chair was Tenby Powell who is a Colonel in the New Zealand Army. He is currently in Ukraine delivering humanitarian aid and helping to evacuate people from the most dangerous areas in the Russian occupied South and East of the country. Tenby has established Kiwi K.A.R.E. (Kiwi Aid & Refugee Evacuation) to fund this aid. Here’s a link to the funding page for Kiwi K.A.R.E.
Well, that’s all for this week. I’m Terry Baucher and you can find this podcast on my website www.baucher.tax or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening and please send me your feedback and tell your friends and clients.
Until next time kia pai te wiki, have a great week!
