David Whitburn

In a fascinating development since my last blog, the Minister of Finance put up a poll on his own website at www.billenglish.co.nz asking:

Do you support tax changes to investment property”

The interesting thing is that out of 863 votes at 7:07pm Sunday 25th April 2010, that 548 people voted no.  That’s a massive 64% of the total vote.  Whilst this poll has a small sample size and cannot be said to be scientific like most web polls, even with a massive margin of error of 13.9%, it would still have more people not supporting tax changes to investment property.

64% of voters do not support tax changes to property investment

This is a very interesting result indeed as this Government doesn’t want to do something its followers don’t like.  National cannot govern alone, and with ACT not guaranteed to win Epsom or get the magic 5% threshold in next year’s election, nor the continued support of the Maori party – I view that the Minister of Finance may have to retract his words he mentioned on NewstalkZB and just keep the tax changes to 1 thing only, depreciation.  This vote is an indication that these tax changes are going to be unpopular policy – obviously to the many tens of thousands of property investors New Zealand has.

So why don’t you have your own say at www.billenglish.co.nz before the poll closes.  I will continue to monitor developments in the lead up to the all important 20 May 2010 budget with the legislative sword looming over property investors heads.

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