Cooking the Books podcast: How a capital gains tax will change your KiwiSaver

Tax Working Group chairman Sir Michael Cullen outlining the details for their proposed capital gains tax last week. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking The Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's the good and bad of a capital gains tax on your KiwiSaver. Hosted by Frances Cook.

Listen to "How a capital gains tax will change your KiwiSaver" on Spreaker.

If you heard howls of outrage and a collective stamping of feet coming from your computer last week, it's not a technical glitch.

You were probably logged in to social media as the announcement was made that the Tax Working Group recommended the Government bring in a capital gains tax.

Basically if you buy something, it increases in value, and then you sell it for a profit, you pay tax on part of that profit.

What that means for property investors has been truly thrashed already, and it's safe to say many of them have made it known that they don't like the idea.

But there were other parts of the report that have been missed, that are very important for the average New Zealander to know about.

For instance, proposed changes to how your KiwiSaver is taxed. Almost all of us have a KiwiSaver fund, certainly more of us than have an investment property, and yet that's barely rated a mention so far.

There are also questions about how it would impact shares investments outside of KiwiSaver.

So I talked to Herald business editor at large Liam Dann about the details of the report.

We discussed who can expect a bigger KiwiSaver and whose might get smaller, the impact on the sharemarket more generally, and how the politics might change which parts of this become reality.

For the interview, listen to the podcast.

If you have a question about this podcast, or an idea for the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here, Instagram here and Twitter here.

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