Posts by Matthew Poole
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Where you run into a wall of Pakeha hostility is the idea of bi-culturalism and the relevance of the treaty as a living document. The treaty is between Maori and the British crown and its successor.
The elephant in that room are four million people who now simply call themselves New Zealanders, and who are not addressed in the treaty.I am going to be deeply un-politically correct here and say I have sympathy for the idea the treaty is the original basis for de jure government. But the realities of New Zealand 170 years on from 1840 makes the current New Zealand state de jure and de facto without need for recourse to the treaty of Waitangi.
Bingo. There's this gaping void between the position of now and the position of historical grievances that must be addressed. "Now" is a huge number of people who consider it a birth-right to go to the beach any time they want, to fish off wharves, boats and beaches within the catch limits, and engage in the lifestyle that is part of the Kiwi ethos.
"Historical grievances" is, if addressed in full, potentially very incompatible with "now". When you have some Maori talking about restricting access to beaches, the two positions run headlong into each other with an almighty crash. How far can the Treaty be brought into "now" without making any further progress on addressing "historical grievances" unpalatable to the majority is a very important issue. If the battle for full redress on the foreshore/seabed question is won by Maori, it will quite possibly be followed by the loss of the wider war to address any other claims because the wider populace will be so thoroughly (and, in my mind, entirely justifiably) aggrieved at no longer having assured access to areas that are totally embedded in the culture that is Kiwi. -
Allan, the quote tag is case-sensitive it seems. And the preview button is your friend :)
Addressing your points, I didn't mean that a trading trust is automatically tax-exempt, but that if the trust is charitable, and trades, then Sanitarium NZ could have a fully tax-exempt status.
Regarding donations, that is a good point. I'd not considered that. However, dividend imputation means that the church won't lose out on the income even if it was no longer a charity. Instead the church would be able to utilise imputation credits, previously denied because of the tax-exempt status, and thus get the benefit of 100% of that profit.
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Introduce a carbon tax that abates GST (i.e. drop GST by an amount that reflects the revenue from carbon). This would for example make food cheaper and petrol more expensive, and there's no need for government to choose which vested interest gets the taxpayer subsidy;
You sir, are, if you'll pardon my French, a fucking genius. I heart that idea so much that I'm not quite sure how to express the voluminous love adequately.
Shame it's such a genius idea that it'll never happen. No, I'm not cynical. Not at all. -
Certainly not, Matthew, and I hope I made it quite clear that I was riding a train of thought and not slapping around a straw person with your name on it.
Yes, I realised that but probably wasn't quite clear enough that I was arguing with you, not against you.
And similarly I do greatly respect your opinion, even if I do sometimes wish that I could (and am glad that I can't) reach through the monitor and strangle you :) -
Are you sure about that? The above-cited Listener article seems to indicate (though it's not really explicit) that that is not the case (page 2.) I also remember a TV piece about the same time.
I am absolutely certain that being owned by a church does not exempt a company from paying income tax in NZ. The ways to run a business within the auspices of a church are to create a trading trust or a partnership, neither of which structures are really suited to a massive industrial enterprise.
I could be wrong, and Sanitarium NZ could be a trading trust and thus exempt from income tax on the basis of its trust holdings, but from what I know of trust management that would be an enormous undertaking. I guess, though, that when you're talking about the tax on so much money it could be worth accepting the limitations and paying advisers just to make it work. In which case, yes, Sanitarium would indeed be running as a totally tax-free operation.My caveats are based on literal interpretation of the word "company" in the discussion of Sanitarium Australia. "Company" is a word with particular legal meaning, and if it's being misused then that throws my prognostications out the window.
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What bothers him is that – despite undiminishing poverty and growing secularisation – many churches and religious groups sit on a largely undisclosed stash of property holdings, investment funds and trading revenues as part of a valuable portfolio made all the more valuable by their tax-exempt status as charitable organisations.
And if the charity status for religion was removed, who would benefit? The state? Maybe in terms of some increase in gross income tax receipts, but as a net effect probably not because the charitable works of the churches in alleviating poverty and maintaining churches that have heritage status would be affected. The state is relieved of a lot of poverty-relief work by the activities of church-affiliated charities, and those charities would be seriously affected by the need to restructure asset portfolios and a reduction in donations if the over-arching charitable status of religion was removed.
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Craig, I'd be one of the last to advocate for a state religion, and precisely for the reasons that you give. But for many of those who would like to see the removal of charity status from religious organisations, that view comes about because they would rather that religion didn't exist at all. You, of all people, will understand what I mean when I talk of the intricate intertwining of the spiritual and charitable aspects of the major churches, and my hesitation to remove the religious charity status because of the inevitable negative effects on the "real" charity work that is carried out.
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That Invalids' Benefit thing cuts very close to home for my family, and I'm all the more furious because of it. My younger brother is legally blind - qualifies for a cane, member of the Blind Foundation, etc - but is actually partially-sighted. It's very partial, to be sure, but still enough to be useful. He gets the IB, as is his right. His experience with trying to get work is that employers don't want to try and accommodate someone who needs little more than a large computer monitor, so that he can run it at a usable resolution without losing all the real estate. He's a competent typist, a qualified computer technician, and very task-focussed. So far he's managed to get precisely one job from all his looking: WinTec employed him part-time for 18 months as a course administrator. Unfortunately they restructured and the position was abolished, so he's back to trying to find a job. Funnily enough, not happening.
Until employers are routinely prosecuted for discrimination against the disabled, invalids aren't going anywhere. No amount of "encouragement" from WINZ can get them jobs that aren't being offered. Of course, I can't see National tackling that particular problem, either. Easier just to bash the beneficiaries than to try and beat sense into employers.
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I think it would go a long way towards removing the potential for abuse in the system - c.f. the cornflakes.
Except that, as I just explained, the cornflakes thing doesn't work here unless Sanitarium NZ is operating it business as something other than a company - which, given the complexities of trying to be a trading trust or a partnership at such a scale, I don't consider to be terribly likely.
Is there abuse? Yes, absolutely. Would things change were your utopian vision to emerge? No, not really. Why not? Gifts are tax-free to the receiver. A family of four can give $108,000 ($27,000*4) a year before they have to pay gift duties, and it doesn't matter if that money is given to 108,000 people or one person, not a single recipient is required to pay tax on the gift (I'll ignore G for the moment).
All that your desires would achieve is that churches would reorganise their structures, put any income-generating assets into the charitable holding trusts, and continue as normal.
Is society now sufficiently secular as to satisfy all the hordes who wish to see religion disappear? Surely is. Are the charitable activities (other than promoting religion) that the churches carry out negatively impacted? Almost certainly. In fact, I would put money on there being a significant decrease in the charitable activities of religiously-affiliated organisations due to the resultant impact on donations. -
Just like to point out that Australian tax law != NZ tax law. In NZ it doesn't matter who owns a company, that company must still pay all taxes that any other company would have to pay. And, in actuality, companies are a poor deal for charities in NZ because the charities, as tax-exempt and thus unable to defer tax, lose the benefit of imputation credits.
So even if Sanitarium Australia doesn't have to pay federal income or profit taxes as a wholly-owned religious company, that does not apply to NZ.
Of course it's possible that the SDAs here have found some way of running a multi-million-dollar profit-making organisation other than as a corporate structure, but I really, seriously doubt it.