Some of us weren’t far off with the gambling levy, being an online service after all.
Actually some solid proposals there, I’m impressed.
Some of us weren’t far off with the gambling levy, being an online service after all.
Actually some solid proposals there, I’m impressed.
I’m also surprised at some decent proposals in here, particularly changing the income tax thresholds which is long overdue. But it pays to keep in mind both major parties are guilty of promising a lot during elections and not keeping their promises once they get in.
I am worried about what their cut to “spending in back office functions in government departments” actually entails and what is considered non-core/frontline agencies. As it stands wait times for a lot of processes now are really long. It’s taken almost a full year for us to hear back from DIA over a mistake that was made on a birth certificate.
Not a fan of returning interest deductibility to rentals and reducing the brightline test again. Also continuing to call the Clean Car Fee a Ute Tax in the policy document is disingenuous.
Edit: Also not happy about scrapping public transport subsidies even though I don’t use it. And “Undoing Labour’s recent extension of 20 hours free early childhood education to two year olds.” I don’t think their FamilyBoost rebate/tax credit thing makes up for it.
The ute tax thing is genuinely disappointing, because I’ve talked to people who genuinely thought it was a tax on utes, and were surprised when I pointed out that other body styles also incurred it. There are also utes clean enough to not incur it.
A lot of this proposal is change for the sake of change, to be honest.
It does seem like it on further thought. I might not be smart enough to understand all the implications, but it does look very targeted to the middle class and up with very little for those on lower incomes.
It’s mostly aimed at full time workers, and will certainly help them a bit.
I’m least surprised by the income tax threshold changes. I’m pretty sure they have talked about it before, and in any case it’s a pretty normal thing for National to do (reduce income tax).
They have said the cuts will come from the core agencies, the ones that most people interact with in a given year. I bet when they get into the detail of things they will have to renege on this promise.
Have you been following up? It doesn’t sound typical. DIA deal with these things on a daily basis. If you’re talking about an overseas one, that’s a lot more difficult because it’s pretty common for people to get a new birth certificate from their home country with a new date of birth on it (in particular, making themselves a bit older so they can get superannuation). Those cases have a higher standard to meet.
I get the point of the interest deductibility thing, but realistically this just makes tax obligations more complicated to fulfill. I’d much prefer addressing the housing cost issue in other ways. Rentals are a business and businesses get to deduct their expenses.
Reducing the brightline test is, in my view, not good. It’s needed to balance out the lack of capital gains tax that would normally apply.
I missed those details. Sometimes I wonder who their target voter base is.
Yep followed up twice. This was for our daughter born Oct last year. We called them as soon as we got the birth certificate. The mistake was definitely my fault as I entered a date wrong. They said it would take a month or so. Followed up again in January as we hadn’t heard anything. They couldn’t find our original reference and said they had to resubmit again and it would take 4 months now. Only just received an email in the last week asking for more information. It’s not really an emergency so we didn’t bother chasing them after the second time.
I think we both know it trends towards the haves rather than the have nots…
It sounds like DIA still haven’t caught up after the COVID massive backlogs. About time for some public service cuts (apparently).
Sure, but a vote for Act is a vote for a National government. And many of that audience would never vote Labour. They need to be targeting the swingvote (say, reasonably well off people early in their careers with young kids).
I guess you’re right. However I think anyone that’s reasonably well off will take the policy at face value and be happy they get more benefits, at the cost of public services that they’re less reliant on.
I’m not really into politics and I’m more concerned with the future society my kids are going to inherit. I’m at a loss this year of who to vote for as they are all not giving me much hope.