«
»

Phil’s Blog: Tax changes a mess

 A good post over at Phils blog on the new investment tax:

It’s becoming clear that the government’s new bill on taxing investments is going to be a shambles and the outcome is likely to, therefore, be a mess.

…there was an acknowledgement that the bill being introduced was incomplete.

This reinforces my view that important tax law was being rushed into Parliament without proper thought and preparation from the politicians.

Bookmark to:
Add 'Phil’s Blog: Tax changes a mess' to Del.icio.us Add 'Phil’s Blog: Tax changes a mess' to digg Add 'Phil’s Blog: Tax changes a mess' to FURL Add 'Phil’s Blog: Tax changes a mess' to blinklist Add 'Phil’s Blog: Tax changes a mess' to My-Tuts Add 'Phil’s Blog: Tax changes a mess' to reddit Add 'Phil’s Blog: Tax changes a mess' to Feed Me Links! Add 'Phil’s Blog: Tax changes a mess' to Technorati Add 'Phil’s Blog: Tax changes a mess' to Yahoo My Web Add 'Phil’s Blog: Tax changes a mess' to Newsvine 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 at 1:30 pm and is filed under New International Regime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Phil’s Blog: Tax changes a mess”

  1. C Milne Says:
    May 25th, 2006 at 5:43 pm

    Cullen says no more tax holidays as for GPG. These naughty investmetn trusts are tax dodges. Of course, we should have known that the F&C Investment Trust was set up in 1877 to avoid the Grey List regime. Silly us.

    Cullen says no more tax holidays

    Finance Minister Michael Cullen says no-one else is getting the sort of tax holiday the government is giving investors in Guinness Peat Group.
    Thursday, 25 May 2006
    By Rob Hosking

    After a major public campaign, and a great deal of private lobbying of New Zealand First and Prime Minister Helen Clark, the government last week declared it would provide a five year tax holiday for investors in firms which meet five very specific criteria.

    It had previously ruled out giving GPG investors any sort of exemption: Cullen stated less than a week before the backdown that GPG’s “call for a special exemption makes no sense in terms of tax policy or fairness�.
    Under the “GPG amendment� to the tax bill currently before Parliament, investors in firms which meet the criteria will not have to comply with the new offshore investment tax rules currently being steered through Parliament, for five years.

    GPG is the only company which fits all five: most of the country’s investment trusts fit four of the five criteria.

    First New Zealand Capital’s Peter Irwin has called for the government to allow investment trusts the same sort of holiday it is offering GPG investors.

    Cullen has ruled that out, and in the process attacked the existence of such investment trusts.

    “I see suggestions are made that those who set up UK investment trusts should have some kind of transitional exemption,� he told the House in answer to questions from National Finance spokesman John Key on Tuesday.

    “Those trusts are set up deliberately as avoidance mechanisms using the ‘grey list’, and, as usual, the party that calls for tax cuts supports the avoidance of tax obligations, which raises tax for everybody else in the country.�

    ENDS

  2. Admin Says:
    May 25th, 2006 at 6:13 pm

    GPG have structured themselves to pay as little tax as possible. Their PR spin is that it would be to costly to relocate here. They are right, it would be to costly but because of the extra tax they would have to pay.

    Thanks for the article. Do you have a link?

  3. Admin Says:
    May 26th, 2006 at 3:25 pm

    Link to the article is here at Good Returns:

    http://www.goodreturns.co.nz/article/976491757.html

Leave a Reply