Tax about gains for the capital

The Cullen-led Tax Working Group purported to improve the structure, fairness and balance of the tax system. Terms like broadening the tax base are expressions, a guise, for increasing taxes to fuel the cost of growing government. It means we must all pay more taxes.

A pundit reported that a capital gains tax raises $8 billion in the first five years — for Government to play with!

Socialist governments’ insatiable appetite for money funds social engineering. Targeting and taxing anything deemed taxable and evil in the eyes of legislators does not play well with those who must pay the bulk of personal tax – the great middle class.

The belief that new punitive taxes modify behaviours and create a better society is naive, messy, the politics of envy, striving to allot even portions of misfortune.

Legislators are guilty of selecting a simplistic idea at the expense of a bigger picture and making it complicated. Smart people can be ingenuous, believing they know what’s best. Discriminatory taxes purporting to fund the greater good seldom deliver.

Lofty well-educated, well-paid, social engineers like Cullen are comfortable.

The great middle class pay most of the personal taxes and can vote governments out.

Giles Crisp, Wellington