Real estate agents told: Stay out of my rubbish
‘‘What needs to be emphasised is that the agents did not enter people’s properties.’’ Peter Thompson, Barfoot & Thompson
The Tax Working Group’s proposal to further subsidise Kiwisaver has been attacked by two well-known pension experts who say it is not clear the scheme has encouraged people to save more.
Accountant Michael Chamberlain and Michael Littlewood – a former co-director of Auckland University’s retirement policy and research centre – made what they described as a ‘‘scathing submission’’ on the working group’s pension plans.
Those plans involve recommending an extra $215 million a year in tax concessions aimed at lower-paid Kiwisaver members.
Littlewood said that would increase taxpayer subsidies for Kiwisaver savings plans to a little over $1 billion a year.
The Tax Working Group (TWG) was set up by the Government under the chairmanship of Sir Michael Cullen to recommend tax changes that could take effect after the next election.
Littlewood said the TWG hadn’t asked whether Kiwisaver was working, and in particular whether there was evidence Kiwisaver had encouraged New Zealanders to save more since it was created in 2007.
International evidence did not support the case for tax-based subsidies for retirement saving, he said.
‘‘They are very expensive, distortionary, inequitable, regressive and demand high, growing regulatory walls around affected assets to ensure the incentives are not ‘misused’. But worst of all, tax incentives seem not to work to raise overall savings. That’s also likely to be the case for Kiwisaver, but we need to find out.’’
The tax system should not ‘‘point’’ people into any particular way of saving and Kiwisaver should not have a tax advantage over alternatives such as workplace savings schemes, he said.
The TWG’S interim report published in September said New Zealand offered ‘‘limited concessions for retirement saving’’ when compared with other countries. But there was ‘‘some evidence to suggest that most New Zealanders are saving enough to provide an ‘adequate’ income in retirement’’, it said. Two real estate agents have been told to stop a campaign that involved putting advertising leaflets in people’s recycling bins.
Auckland real estate agents Matt O’brien and Cris Casares, of Barfoot & Thompson, have been distributing fliers into Aucklanders’ recycling bins suggesting neighbours’ bins were overflowing with champagne due to successful property sales.
Some residents were unimpressed, complaining on Twitter that the pair should ‘‘stay out of the bins’’.
Marketing and communications consultant Cas Carter said that was not necessarily a bad thing for the campaign.
‘‘It has created some controversy but that may have been the intention to get more cut-through to their audience. In this instance getting people talking, and posting, about the campaign is giving it good profile.’’
But University of Auckland head of marketing Bodo Lang said it was a risky tactic when an increasing number of people were putting up ‘‘no junk mail’’ signs on their letterboxes.
‘‘It can be seen as doubly invasive: it is direct marketing that was put in a spot that most people would regard as their private sphere, and it implies that the sender pays close attention to other people’s rubbish bins, which according to many people would be considered unusual, if not intrusive, behaviour.’’
Barfoot & Thompson managing director Peter Thompson said he had asked the pair to stop ‘‘what many regard as a clever and innovative campaign promoting their sales services’’.
‘‘The majority see the posters, attached to the inner lid of recycle bins, for what they are – a tonguein-cheek promotion,’’ he said.
‘‘However, there is a bylaw prohibiting putting material into other people’s recycle and rubbish bins ... What needs to be emphasised is that the agents did not enter people’s properties.
‘‘The leaflets were attached when the bins were at the kerb following recycling.’’