National’s super plans opposed by two of its allies
TheNewZealand National Party’s plans to offer tax incentives for retirement savings have been slammed by two of its allies — its potential coalition partner Act, and right-wing think tank the Business Roundtable.
Business Roundtable executive director Roger Kerr describes the idea as a “retrograde step”.
“This should be opposed as having no basis in professional analysis,” he told delegates at a superannuation conference recently.
New research from the Business Roundtable contends that New Zealand does not have a savings problem. Consequently, Kerr dismisses the need for tax incentives and is also highly critical of compulsory savings schemes.
He describes both as being “ineffective, distorting, inequitable and illiberal policies”.
At the same conference, the National’s official superannuation spokesperson Gerry Brownlee confessed that savings incentives have no direct impact on savings levels.
Likewise, a spokesperson for the National’s potential coalition partner, Rodney Hide of the Act party, said he doesn’t support tax incentives.
Act appears to have no superannuation policy, and its previous position, compulsory savings, has been discredited by the Roundtable, which is seen as one of its key allies.
Kerr describes incentives and compulsion as plans to attack “a problem that does not exist, with a mechanism that will not work, in order to achieve a goal that would harm the economy”.
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