GCSB & Fat Tax Redux: Both Sux. Plus I Mention The War.

Here’s the problem.

Two of the current main players in the privacy debate in New Zealand are the man who's single vote is going to put the GCSB Bill into law, Peter Dunne, and leading the inquiry into the leak of Rebecca Kitteridge’s report, the man who has just jackbooted all over the freedom of the fourth estate, David Henry.

Look at the careers of these two men:

Dunne is the ex-Minister of Revenue: Henry the ex-Commissioner of Inland Revenue. Both men have dedicated some great deal of their career to ensuring their tax department is so powerful we have no right to be left alone, no right to privacy, in order the state can take our property and our effort to fund a planned society some few of us have no philosophical agreement with. A state so powerful that in the tax field it can enact and apply retrospective legislation to re-write a taxpayer's history at the whim of bureaucrats - it's not a Godwin to say the same as the Soviets did, it's merely fact: indeed a practice so prevalent there are now professional continuing education courses in how to survive retrospective tax enactment. Neither man could possibly understand what the concept of privacy entails. Of course Henry asked for Vance’s phone records: given his tax department background he would have simply thought this normal and routine; that's the culture of IRD, that there is no private part of you free from their purview, they own you. And as for Dunne: well he’s just contemptible. After being destroyed via the invasion of his privacy, he is still going to vote for every Kiwi to be spied on by GCSB. This man is living through a mid-life crisis that has turned him into the definition of contradiction, and unfortunately we are paying the price for this with our liberty, as will beagles in laboratories.

If there had been a Libertarianz member in Parliament in place of Mr Dunne, and a libertarian minded person who understood the principle tenets of classical liberalism running the enquiry of Mr Henry, the GCSB Bill would not be about to become law, nor would  Andrea Vance, and via her our fourth estate, have been compromised. We could’ve all – if we took enough drugs to pretend IRD can’t frog march every single one of us to interview room 101 whenever they want with no legal recourse – pretended this was the free society millions of men and women died fighting a major world war for. Why was Henry put up to head that inquiry when he had no philosophical qualifications (academic or experience-based) for that post?

It’s a travesty. But I knew that, because as the byline of this blog states, civilisation is the movement toward privacy, the police state the opposite, and tax legislation, particularly tax administration, has become the legislation and administration of the surveillance state.

And while I’m looking into this boiled egg before me, well-salted teaspoon in hand – I write these posts over breakfast - regarding the fat tax promotion, yet again. The free society’s perspective simply stated:

A fat tax is a tax on food choice.

A tax on food choice is a tax on choice, period.

A tax on choice is a tax on our freedom.

The topic of fat taxes does not take place in the health vote, it’s a philosophical issue.

. ... I'm getting sick of writing this entire post over and over. Hopefully next post I’ll have time to finish my take-take on the Clifford Bay ferry terminal. The bureaucrats are mucking up that one also.

But lastly, as I’ve mentioned the war, what those men and women were fighting for.

IRD and Retrospective Law Making Again – A Question for the Politicians.

Rob Hosking at NBR has penned two articles on IRD’s newly issued interpretation statement on tax avoidance. Pursuant to his latest:

IRD officials can make changes to tax law retrospectively and on the hoof – and it is hurting New Zealand business, tax practitioners say.

A long-awaited Inland Revenue interpretation statement on tax avoidance was finally released yesterday, and it confirms the ability of officials to deem activity tax avoidance even if it meets other criteria of the tax law.

The interpretation statement has been in the works since 2001, and although several drafts have been published a series of court wins by IRD have shifted the legal boundary of what is, and is not, tax avoidance further and further in favour of the taxman.

I have a question:

I'd like someone in opposition to explain to me why they get (rightly) exercised by government spooks spying on us, yet in this instance, not a word of protest from the Fortress of Legislation on government officials having the power to rewrite a taxpayer's history, just like they do in police states. Because retrospective legislation gives them that power: what I do today that's legal, they can manipulate at their discretion to be illegal tomorrow. By bureaucratic whim, innocence is turned to (fiat) criminality, and so taxpayers live at the whim of the state. No government, no state, should ever have such power.

Note I know the answer, I just want someone in the Fortress, including a minister in government, honest enough to admit it (and with it, admit the death of the free West, with its civilising rule of law). 

And for that matter, what about all those other private sector groups protesting the new powers of the GCSB, such as Tech Liberty New Zealand: why no protest over taxation matters, given tax administration is where the truncheon of the police state truly hits our backsides.

Related:

The Police State Powers of IRD. 

Retrospective Tax Enforcement End of Rule of Law.

Retrospective Tax Enforcement Again: IRD and Accommodation Allowances.

Westminster Principle in Taxation is What the ANZAC’s Were Fighting For.

It’s Over: Mr Dunne Has Done Away with the Rule of Law.

My posts this month have concerned how IRD, in a growing trend, routinely flouts the rule of law, as known in a decent, classical liberal (old style) Western society.

First this post on the harm of retrospective enforcement. By this means a government can now re-write your personal history. Think of the implications that has from what we should have learned from the twentieth century, and into our future.

Then as if by a sick providence, the IRD announced its plans the very next day to retrospectively enforce a changed view on accommodation allowances, regardless that this may have major deleterious implication for the Christchurch rebuild (mind you, Christchurch has become a full out welfare city now, with property rights, where they matter, wholly destroyed under Herr Brownlee’s compulsory acquisition).

Probably before Christmas I’ll put up an already written post about an egregious disregard of the rule of law by the Minister’s Department that is going to hurt some hundreds of hard working families. I’m thinking about that post, but in the meantime, IRD seems determined to provide a wealth of subject matter for this blog – indeed, I can’t keep up with their abuse of the power of state anymore. Again, yesterday, as adequately described by KMPG’s Taxmail, a further expansion of the tax base:

Close on the heels of its announcement on accommodation benefits last Thursday, Inland Revenue has released a draft Interpretation Statement on tax residence. The draft Statement updates Inland Revenue’s previously published view, which dates back to June 1989. Taxmail discusses some of the key changes.

The main changes to Inland Revenue’s interpretation of tax residence revolve around the on-going availability of property in New Zealand. Inland Revenue is placing greater weight on whether a dwelling is available, and lowering the hurdle to meet that requirement. As a result, many people currently overseas, who believe they are not taxable in New Zealand, may have an unfortunate surprise because of the change in approach and weight placed by Inland Revenue on property retained in New Zealand.

We, the defeated working and businesspeople of New Zealand, should probably just call it a day. It was all over some while ago, the free, decent society, from the moment the first statist dictatorian decided they could spend my money better than I can. Okay Mr Dunne, I’ve got my wallet here, my wife’s, all our bank account numbers, please just let me know where you want me to send them for ease of the Department’s access; simply send us a note in due course on the pocket money and crap government services we can expect in return. (Have you ever read, Minister, the first paragraph of my blug by-line?)

… Stop press. Stupid me.  Mrs H informs me IRD have all our bank account details, of course they do, and the banks just cough that up to you and the police routinely anyway, on any and every citizen – they don’t even need a warrant: this is the Big Brother State; no, truly. And there’s nothing in my wallet but a bit of small change, anyway, and I don’t suppose government has irresponsibly quite spent so much on itself to build the caring society, that you need to cash up Mrs H’s lippy just yet?

Yes? Jeez.

Retrospective Tax Enforcement Again: IRD & Accommodation Allowances

As I explained in this post, regarding how retrospective law enforcement belongs to dictatorial tyrannies, not Western social democracies – though apparently also in social(alist) democracies - IRD in New Zealand are now routinely imposing retrospective enforcement on a populace with no ability to fight them. And I say no ability to fight them because what can an individual do against a department already operating outside the rule of law; especially when issues like this are put to the Minister, as I did on Twitter last night - and he's being alerted to this post – but like Nero he simply just ignores anything that doesn’t suit him in the ruthless pragmatism of turning his department into a juggernaut concerned with obtaining maximum money from the taxpayer, regardless of the law, to feed a State that continues to spend irresponsibly. I’ve already written on how this Minister has his head stuck so far up the politick, his refusal to sign up to even the symbolism of a government spending cap is a demonstration of an inappropriate focus only on building the power of an abusive state, and not on who that state is supposed to be there for: to protect the liberty of the individual citizen. And that this and successive governments are evil – used in a secular sense – because they have been ignorant of the classical liberal ethic and rule of law the free West was founded on, and thus have unwittingly, to put the best case on this, used the arsenal of the Fortress of Legislation, to destroy the decent society. We are so badly served by our politicians, not one of whom seems to have done a history lesson.

Yesterday the Commissioner of IRD announced a change to the treatment of accommodation allowances: you don't need to know how this issue works, just that the new interpretation is to be retrospectively enforced over the last two years:

[IRD] claims also that while the ruling may appear to be new, such accommodation payments should have been treated as income and attracted PAYE tax payments for some years. Taxpayers who thought they had treated such payments incorrectly are being urged to make voluntary declarations.

"In many cases those making a voluntary disclosure will only be required to account for PAYE over the previous two years, and they will not be subject to use of money interest or shortfall penalties," Mr Tubb says.

KPMG's Taxmail succinctly sums up the problems:

The IRD’s position is contrary to common practice, including its own previous statements, and seems to be trying to rewrite history. The technical reasoning adopted in the Statement is unclear and elements of the interpretation are inconsistent. We are not convinced IRD has this right from either a technical or policy point of view.

 

And let it be known, when our liberty and freedom were being destroyed, according to his tweets, our Minister was only concerned with what is happening to the tabloid press in the UK. Not good enough. In some small part only, this blog registers the absolute disappointment and anger of that small but vital part of the citizenry that has a clue - if the moronic meme of the 1% applies to anything, I suspect only to that anymore.

Now, with anger on 100%, I have to move from a Minister who may well end up advocating torturing dogs so the 99% can deaden the pain of our social(alist) democracy with party pills, to my neighbour who I have little doubt uses the damned things, and has, after so much effort and aggro from this household to improve the lot of their poor wee dog, reverted yet again into a dog concentration camp. I'm pretty much over life circa 2012 at the moment.