Is New Zealand too reliant on property?

[00:00:00]Really what we're saying here is I think a lot of people recognize that our economy is broken and it's really struggling. Like we've productivity has been flat, growth has been flat whether we've had national or labor led governments we've not been able to to solve that problem.

[00:00:15]And so we think it's time for a proper grown-up conversation about our tax system in New Zealand. We know that we have a narrow tax space. So we compared to other countries we tax few things and property is the obvious place where we have you know no no taxes really. I mean obviously people pay rates which is a slightly different thing.

[00:00:34]But it doesn't disincentivize things like land banking at huge property portfolios. So that's that's kind of the rationale and and why why we've done this.

[00:00:42]And labor's capital gains tax isn't enough. Well, it's pretty minuscule in terms of tackling the property problem and I don't think it would be enough to disincentivize things like land banking.

[00:00:52]Actually a capital gains tax would incentivize those developers to hold on to it for longer so they can avoid paying the tax. Whereas a broad flat land value tax actually incentivizes things like development.

[00:01:04]It's it's affordable when we also combine it with our citizen's income which is on the other side of it.

[00:01:10]So it's about shifting some of that burden off what you pay on your income tax onto land tax so that you can't just grow your wealth by buying assets, buying a whole bunch of property.

[00:01:20]You actually might be directed to put that money into a fund or a you know a business that you want to start or support a friend that's running a business. At the moment that doesn't really happen because the most attractive thing to do is just buy up a bunch of rental properties which pushes the price up which means the next generation is locked out of home ownership.

[00:01:37]>> Kerry Woodham Mornings, weekdays from 9:00 a.m. only on News Talk ZB.