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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