When is a tax a tax?
Imagine your dues to government not as taxes. Just as payments with benefits. Bliss. [...]
Tax
A Green path to the fringe
For the Greens’ long-term success, the party would be wise not to focus on its fringe supporters –which might just get the party over the 5 percent threshold – but instead on the centre of society which could make the Greens a mainstream force [...]
To the Government’s credit
If politicians could make companies more productive and innovative by decree, they would have done so a long time ago. [...]
A robo-tax
Bill Gates wants a tax on robots. But what about all the other things that have made us ever made more productive? [...]
Should legal fictions pay taxes?
Most economists would agree that for this reason companies never really pay tax at all. So my question is why do we keep pretending that they do? [...]
New Zealand is not Panama
It surprising just how quickly commentators jumped from the Panama Papers to assumptions about New Zealand’s offshore trusts regime. [...]
Dead horses do not build houses
If there is a housing shortage at the root of our affordability crisis, the best response is to increase housing supply. [...]
Can Juncker survive ‘Lux Leaks’?
Whether Juncker’s political career will come to an abrupt end now depends entirely on whether he can sufficiently distance himself from the Lux Leaks revelations. Or indeed, whether those who elected him to his new office will award him a grace period regardless. [...]
Mind the trans-Tasman tax gap
Plans to increase the top rate of income tax may be good populist policy - they may even win elections. But they would be a sure disaster for the New Zealand economy by robbing us of one of our key competitive advantages over Australia. [...]
Celebrate tax freedom while you can
Australia is on a slippery slope of becoming more like European countries. If the government continues to spend big and finance it through deficits, the future tax burden may have to rise substantially to pay for a growing debt burden. [...]