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Christmas Present Tips for Guys

Christmas Shopping Tips for Guys

giftgreen1Most of us guys are useless at Christmas shopping. Here's a few tips I've picked up over the years.

Ladies, you might want to share this with the men in your family to avoid getting an undesirable and badly wrapped present this Christmas.

  1. Buying your Christmas presents at a petrol station or dairy on Christmas morning really isn't the done thing - apparently not everyone wants a funnel, box of biscuits or a car care kit. Don't do it.
  2. Get started early, no not on Christmas Eve, yesterday was already too late.
  3. First thing in the morning is the best time to Christmas shop, and I mean first thing, teenagers are still in bed.
  4. It's not the thought that counts, it's how MUCH thought that counts.
  5. Cash is a GREAT present for teenagers - and me.
  6. If you must give gift vouchers make sure they are from a shop the recipient actually shops in and try and avoid those with an expiry date.
  7. Wrapping and cards are important, you and I know it's just paper but for some reason they are important.
  8. Before you start browsing in a shop check that it does gift wrapping and accept the service - wait if necessary. If the shop doesn't do gift wrapping move on to the next. Unless you are an expert present wrapper - Yeah Right!
  9. Even if every present you buy is gift wrapped, buy plenty of wrapping paper and sellotape. You are going to need it because dairy's and petrol stations don't gift wrap and being a bloke you'll probably ignore number 1.

Guys ignore the above at your peril and have a wonderful Christmas.

Posted in Taxation.

We have had the hand wringing

The IRD has had its hit squads combing the supposed ‘high growth’ areas of Queenstown and Wanaka, and others no doubt – good on them. We have heard all the good reasons why we shouldn’t have a capital gains tax on residential property investment. 

How can it be somehow a social good to buy some run down dump, give it a lick of paint, a kitset garden and then flog it off to some unsuspecting punter and pocket the margin tax-free. Or worse, have every white-shoe merchant flogging investment nirvana via the wonderful tool of highly leveraged and maximum depreciation enhanced residential property packages. We even have the gullible and naïve, the great unwashed joining membership associations, paying exorbitant fees at times, to learn the dark and wonderful secrets of this national DIY past time.

On the other hand we have the governor of the Reserve Bank exhorting the benefits of equity investing over residential housing. Pleading the case that equity investment into our nation of small to medium businesses will somehow strengthen our asset base and then deny the floods of foreign capital a place to call home – yeah right! Debt or equity, with interest rates that NZ has on offer (among the highest in the world) and our tissue thin barriers to casual overseas investment in NZ – not likely.

What has got the tongue of our policy makers on this matter. The IRD already have the rules on how income is taxed and just what does constitute income. But no, we are told it is political suicide to even contemplate enforcing them generally let alone taking a pragmatic view of the wider investment landscape and saying yes - if you invest and you gain, you sell, you pay tax – call it capital gains tax or not..

Forget the namby-pamby about the ‘intention’ interpretation. The, ‘I bought for the rental and look it was just not a go for me, so I sold it for a $50,000 profit (not taxed of course) but the ‘intention’ was never to make a gain’ – is just rubbish.

Before all the residential property folk around the country suffer apoplexy let me state that I am not unfavourably disposed to investment via residential property. Just don’t try to convince me that the real long run returns are anything other than an inflation adjusted 6-8% per annum, inclusive of rental, but gross of tax and you should be exempt from taxation on selling, other than on our own homes.

Let’s hear somebody from Wellington admit there is a serious issue of tax evasion and then do something about it. If I blithely suggested I work because I just happen to like it and it was a real surprise that I actually made a profit it does not absolve me from the responsibility of paying tax at the thirty nine cent level. So why should a ‘grey market’ of evasion exist in the residential investment arena.

 

Original Article published November 2006

 

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