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Susan would be the one to sell it to Labour. I will send Chris Hopkins the interview. Something certainly needs to be done for the next election. If labour does nothing the Green Party most certainly will and it will result in a massive split vote. I believe Chris would be strong enough if he runs with it strongly. Much appreciated.

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Another great interview what a shame Aderns government didn't have the gumption to bring it in. Mind you this govt. would probably have reversed it. I think it is really difficult to explain to people about tax as you look at your own situation & get a bit scared. I think they should look to what a 4 bedroom 2 bathroom house costs to build these days & then what a section of land costs I think it would be well over a million bucks.

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A couple would have a $1 million net equity exemption each. Their home might be worth $3million for example but if they are younger they are likely to have a very large mortgage so they would not be affected much if at all.

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Great interview. Very interesting. Thank you both.

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Another interesting discussion, thanks Susan and Bryan. It's quite obvious the country needs to collect more revenue to fund the essential services we expect and its not going to happen by endlessly growing the economy.

I'd support this approach, and it's been TOP policy from the beginning (through Gareth Morgan who was involved in one of the tax working groups, as far as I remember.)

Has any work been done to estimate the value of housing property over the $2m threshold (assuming couple owned)? What about property owned by a trust with 10 effective owners; do they all get a $1m exemption? In some ways I'd prefer no exemption and a lower tax rate.

Would the ability to defer tax until sale be available to all, or just pensioners?

A few questions but good to get a conversation going. Thanks again.

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Good questions Alan. I will send to Susan to comment.

B

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yes thanks Alan for getting the discussion going

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We make some ball-park estimates in the papers. It has been surprising me to see how many very high-priced homes there are. In Queenstown Lakes alone 570 properties average $10-11m each.

If the property is held in the trust/company no individual exemption would be allowed. We argue that those entities confer advantages. The ability to defer the tax would probably require that the FER income is taxed at the company or trust rate and a compounding amount held against the eventual sale. In other words, there would be penalties to make it a last resort.

Of course there will be tricky bits to FER around the edges, but that's what a draft plan set up by tax experts would iron out

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