Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Random Acts of New Zealand Law Making - GST and Mixed Use Assets.


The below has now happened to me twice. This one for all the farm secretaries and bookkeepers out there trying to get their GST returns right …

In the course of traveling home from a lunch out, this weekend, I made a quick visit to a client who has just purchased a vehicle that will be used partly for business, partly for private, and he wanted to know the Goods and Services Tax (GST) treatment on it as I had earlier sent an email on how the rules governing this had changed.

I’d been hoping for a cup of tea, rather than asked to do the impossible, as I no longer had a clue how GST on mixed use assets worked, because the new rules were so complicated I’d had to deliberately forget them - in the US called mis-remembering - in order to create enough room in my mind for it to carry on coordinating the basic bodily functions to survive and be taxed another day. I could sit down with a client and explain the old rules in ten minutes, but the new rules consist of calculations across about four A4 pages, and include having to recalculate every year, and ring your tax advisor every GST period. Indeed, during the TEO course that covered the changes, between trying not to laugh out loud, or weep uncontrollably, I remembered having two thoughts:

First, eleven out of ten affected taxpayers, even if they could get their heads around the calculations, probably wouldn’t bother, as given the largely immaterial sums involved, they would think their time better spent trying to make or sell something to earn their living, rather than risk losing their minds to the insanity of a bureaucrat’s mid-life crisis (which could be the only reasonable explanation of such idiot new rules). Compliance with the new rules will be as likely as overall tax decreases under all of our statist parties in parliament, in which I include National - increased excise taxes, new Companies Office charges, et al - and that funless fundy Christian bloke whose recently changed his name to ACT. And this will not be the fault of the taxpayers, but of the law makers.

Second, that for politicians to go to this level of convolution to extort every last little cent from a dying business sector, and to think it ‘fair’to foist such nonsense on hard working business people, then our planned economy under their bungling management must be in serious trouble. I wonder what little amount the government would have to spend less, this year, to save the productive from this new complicated horror that has been foisted on them.

So, instead of worrying about making IRD’s Internet site easier to follow (Jesus wept) perhaps our politicians might more profitably spend their time making tax laws that taxpayers can actually follow without the need of a PHD in mathematics. Indeed, if you want some free advice, why not just go back to the old rules for dealing with mixed use assets: they were easy and - as much as legalised theft can be - fair: why did we have to change them? As it is, all the politicians have done is give more one-sided sport to auditors who are going to have a ball on the new rules. Not much good for the country though. And for Rand's sake, please see to it the bureaucrat responsible for this mess of more red tape gets the counseling he or she needs, so they don't have to work through their personal problems by taking away the liberty of taxpayers like this.


And while we’re talking random acts of law-making, the new (L)ost (T)he (C)ompanies legislation, particularly surrounding owner’s basis calculations is MENTAL. So many ways to come unstuck. But I can’t even face that at the moment.

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