There should be a mortgage tax ?

On average, everyone strongly disagrees with nonconsensus between 43 voters.

Reasons To Disagree

This will only make it harder for fisrt home buyers. New Zealanders already pay to much tax!

we should receive tax deductions for being on flexi-rate mortgages, alowing the reserve bank better real time influence

Yeah right - plus taxes on sex, breathing and anything else you can think of. What the HELL do we need more taxes for? There's enough of 'em!

What is the New Zealand family going to live on? we have a "tax mad" government as it is, do you relise that nearly seventy - five percent of your incime is swallowed up in taxation of one kind or another. try starting with a figure of say $1000 then subtract the taxation percentage levels in order in which they are applied, don,t forget such things as petrol tax and "inescapable" local body taxes. see what is left for your disposable income. The answer will shock you.

Reasons To Agree

Although when i first heard about this i thought it was a stupid idea, i later realised it wasn't. If Alan Bollard can with a few words increase the interest rates by 1 percentage point, he puts the same dent in everyones interest bills as if it were a mortgage tax. So both measures hurt the poor the same. However a tax does not make foreign investment more desireable, and it does not artificially raise our exchange rates, which is bad for our exporters and bad for our trading deficit. A tax also raises a source of revenue for the country that can be spent on subsidising first home buyers. Where as interest rate hikes just ships our money off shore. A mortgate tax would be good simple economic lever that would ensure that government can control money supply, while ensureing we don't loose our jobs and find we have $100 more to pay a week on our mortgage.

Depends how it is managed...