NRT: Facilitating tax cheats

Written By: - Date published: 4:25 pm, July 20th, 2015 - 15 comments
Categories: housing, law, tax - Tags: , ,

I/S at No Right Turn…

Facilitating tax cheats

Just before the budget the government announced new rules for real estate transactions aimed at cracking down on tax cheats and speculators. So naturally, we now have real estate agents trying to rush sales through before those rules come into effect:

Kevin Liu of Barfoot & Thompson’s Onehunga office sent a letter out to home owners in his area, asking them to get in touch if they were thinking of selling.

This is because there was steep demand from “some groups of buyers” which he said would be affected by a new law due to come into effect from October 1.

To get around new tax and banking restrictions, those buyers now wanted places, he indicated.

But the only reason to want to do that is to cheat on your taxes, either in New Zealand or overseas (overseas buyers might also be wanting to hide corruptly-acquired money from their own governments). But Barfoot & Thompson don’t seem to care about that; all they want is their commission, and they seem to be knowingly willing to facilitate tax cheating and money laundering to get it.

15 comments on “NRT: Facilitating tax cheats ”

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  1. Skinny 1
    20 July 2015 at 4:42 pm

    So typical of the real estate trade. Not a shred of a moral compass. No leadership from Barfoot or Thompson. Send in the serious fraud office and IRD, open up the books and let’s see the trail, be interested to see if there is a flow on to dodgy lawyers and accountants using colourful accounting practices. Wonder what cactus Kate is up to these days?

  2. infused 2
    20 July 2015 at 5:08 pm

    As much as you want it to be, this isn’t cheating tax.

    • McFlock 2.1
      20 July 2015 at 5:22 pm

      probably a reasonable criticism.

      It’s merely facilitating “a rush of people who for some reason wish to purchase properties under conditions that make cheating tax easier to get away with, winkwink nudgenudge know what I mean”.

      • Phil 2.1.1
        20 July 2015 at 5:47 pm

        Plenty of people used to stockpile booze and ciggies before the budget, because they knew the excise tax was going to go up… were they tax cheats?

        • McFlock 2.1.1.1
          20 July 2015 at 6:02 pm

          but this isn’t about a new tax, or a tax increase.

          Making a blanket two-year rule clarifies the tax code, but people who would be violating that if it applied at the moment are most likely purchasing properties for capital gains rather than long term ownership, so should be paying tax already. But aren’t, otherwise there’s no point to rushing a purchase.

          Requiring IRD numbers makes it harder to avoid current taxes both here and abroad, because it uniquely identifies transactions to individuals. Again, the only reason to rush to purchase is if this linking would result in taxes being paid because the investor is not currently declaring their property transactions/profits.

          • Draco T Bastard 2.1.1.1.1
            20 July 2015 at 7:09 pm

            +1

            Our tax system really needs to be re-written from the ground up and make sure that there are no loopholes in it. This amending, amending, amending that’s been going on just seems to create ever more loopholes as the politicians try to close them up.

    • Skinny 2.2
      20 July 2015 at 7:31 pm

      It was a sarcastic comment, however if IRD had a close look at those jumping in, you can almost guarantee there would be people of interest to them. You know…. tax dodgers.

      • Graeme 2.2.1
        20 July 2015 at 9:34 pm

        Yeah, I really wondered what they were up to giving nearly 6 month notice of the requirements. Usually these things are announced in the budget and passed under urgency, like the fag and petrol taxes of old. Looking it at as a honey trap… O lordy

        • ankerawshark 2.2.1.1
          20 July 2015 at 10:10 pm

          Yes Graeme, like stopping the Kiwisaver start up bonus. No notice given there.

  3. sabine 3
    20 July 2015 at 6:37 pm

    So essentially he is saying that he has buyers that would like to onsell their new purchases for capital gain?

    But that is just good business sense, and if hardworking kiwis can’t compete with the international/national market of buyers so be it.

    Suckers, they just got to try harder, or faster or move out of auckland .See no problem, no tax evasion no nothing.

    Just keen buyers, national and international that want to buy a property today and onsell it in a month or two or maybe a year, and who would not with an average property price increase of a grand a day.

    nothing to see here.
    move along.

    • ropata 3.1
      20 July 2015 at 7:38 pm

      Yep look at what happened to the US property bubble, even without the influence of foreign capital the yank banks invented crazy new ways to keep inflating the market until eventually they ran out of suckers to buy their crap loans.

      Keep for-profit banks out of our housing, they are fucking up the market and creaming money for nothing.

      • sabine 3.1.1
        20 July 2015 at 7:45 pm

        Hedge Funds have been busy buying up the forclosed property at massive numbers.
        Hedge Funds are now Landlord.

        But surely such a thing would never happen in NZ.

        Found this, interesting read.

        http://wolfstreet.com/2015/06/04/canadian-mortgage-insurer-genworth-tells-us-hedge-funds-why-canadas-housing-bubble-is-immortal-hilarity-ensues/

        quote: That’s what Stuart Levings, CEO of Canada’s largest mortgage insurer, Genworth MI Canada, told Bloomberg in an interview:

        ”We look at the housing market like a food chain. The first-time homebuyers are really the plankton. And if you don’t have plankton in the ocean, you’re going to eventually starve out even the big whales and the sharks. You need that first time homebuyer to buy that home so the next person can move out to buy their own home.”

        And there was plenty of this plankton, namely millennials and about 250,000 immigrants per year who’re buying their first property, he said.

        “There is strong demand in this country and there will always be,” Levings said. “Why? Simply because of our immigration policy. We bring in first-time buyer pipelines through our immigration policy. They are great future first-time homebuyers that become plankton.”

        • ropata 3.1.1.1
          20 July 2015 at 7:51 pm

          except the law of nature is that when the predators eat everything the entire ecosystem dies.

          millennials are not buying into these ponzi schemes.

    • ropata 3.2
      20 July 2015 at 7:40 pm

      NZ is a fraudster’s paradise and haven for foreign money launderers.

  4. esoteric pineapples 4
    21 July 2015 at 10:54 am

    The spokesperson from Barfoot & Thompson sounded like a pompous self righteous twat when he was speaking to media about them sacking the staff member who leaked the statistics to Labour.