Fuel tax, water tax…and now a capital gains tax

by Cameron Slater on August 14, 2017 at 10:30am

Labour are really piling on the taxes, Grant Robertson has let the cat out of the bag for Labour to bring back their capital gains tax.

Finance Minister Steven Joyce says the opposition are “dodgy on tax” but Labour says it’s continuing to leave a number of tax issues open, saying they will be resolved by a tax working group after the election.

“They’re refusing to say about the capital gains, they’ve mentioned a water tax last week, but they won’t tell us how much it is, and then, of course, they’ve got a regional fuel tax they won’t talk about where it goes beyond Auckland,” Mr Joyce told TV3’s The Nation programme on Saturday.

Labour’s finance spokesman Grant Robertson wouldn’t rule out a capital gains taxin the first term of a future Labour government because a tax working group would consider tax issues.

“I can’t pre-empt what that group says, but here’s the important point – right now today we have something called the bright-line test that the National Party brought in.

“It says that if you sell a house that’s not your family home within two years, you’ll pay tax on it.”

See…there is the tax working group that they’ve talked about for the last 3 elections. Robbo is so lazy he still hasn’t worked out his tax schemes. Instead he wants us to trust Labour.

He said that was a form of capital gains tax.

“What we’re going to the election with is a commitment that if you sell a property that is not your family home within five years, you’ll be taxed for that,” Mr Robertson said.

Many, many people have multiple properties. Labour really are intent on touching third rail polices this election. They are loading up the taxes on middle NZ for sure.

Mr Robertson also would not rule out taking on the Green Party policy of a top tax rate of 40 per cent on incomes over $150,000 but said “I don’t think we will be going for that”.

Labour have been criticised for unveiling plans to charge for water without saying how much.

“The water levy? Look, what we’ve said there is for every thousand litres of water that’s used in irrigation, perhaps one or two cents,” Mr Robertson said.

I’ve heard a much higher percentage for the top tax rate from Labour circles…like 49 per cent.

Robbo is still short on details for his water tax…note he says levy…to hoodwink stupid people into thinking they aren’t raising taxes.