64% FBT triggers huge costs to Business

Labour’s Dr Michael Cullen has dented Labour’s credibility with ordinary workers by pushing the FBT rate to 64%, says National’s Revenue Spokesperson, Annabel Young MP.

“The 64% tax hits all people in jobs, regardless of income. All workers face the possibility of losing their fringe benefits because they now cost much more to provide. People on low incomes need to know that the Labour Party has hit them with this as a Christmas present.”

Annabel Young predicts that the renegotiations of contracts to remove benefits will trigger industrial strife across the whole workforce.

“The employer will not be able to provide the same package for the same dollars because the tax cost has just leapt up.

For the same dollars, the employer will be able to afford less. Unhappy workers on lower remuneration because of tax increases are a recipe for strikes and lost productivity.”

ends

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>