The Greens wealth tax

[harm_less]

Pardon? our house had a value of $1.2M 18 months ago. For us to find $25,000 for tax on that would be a dream! So many people are sitting on a market driven high value assets without having a lot of cash in the bank.

Ridiculous idea!

If the Trust has a tax liability (currently paying 20K), it is because the Trust is making taxable income - subsequently it needs to pay a fair share of tax...   At a guess I would say that house in the trust that dken1 mentioned is being rented out, but the tax liability would seem to be a bit excessive for a single rental - more details on that would be needed...

The wealth tax also being proposed (not sure if it was a Green agenda or not) is a different matter where people like yourself would need to find the cash, or the liability deferred until the asset is sold or some such...  Not sure I agree with that one...

Seems that all incumbant parties are going out of their way to avoid actually addressing the CGT 'elephant in the room'.

For those owning commercial/industrial investment properties the capital gain occurring for that property is taxed by way of its eventual sale price and any depreciation claimed over the period of ownership becomes additional to the return gained so is in effect also taxed. The ability for residental properties (other than the family's own home) to not be taxed in a similar way is an obvious investment loophole that is being taken advantage of by significant numbers of New Zealanders to the detriment of New Zealand's housing availability to first home buyers. We need to address this anomaly in our housing ownership model to bring it in line with most other countries.