National's tax incentives slammed
The National Party's plans to offer tax incentives for retirement savings have been slammed by Business Roundtable executive director Roger Kerr.
Sunday, March 10th 2002, 10:50PM
Kerr described the idea as a "retrograde step" at a superannuation conference late last week.
"This should be opposed as having no basis in professional analysis," he told the delegates at the conference.
He comments came during a presentation that examined the savings patterns of New Zealanders.
The thrust of the roundtable's research was 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 National's official superannuation spokesman Gerry Brownlee confessed that savings incentives have no direct impact on savings levels.
Likewise, a spokesman for 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."
Kerr pushed the line that tax cuts and smaller government are the answer to New Zealand's economic problem.
"The key to providing high incomes in retirement is the pursuit of policies promoting high economic growth," he says.
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