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Gareth Morgan sells to Kiwibank

by Whaleoil on January 18, 2012

Good on old Gareth Morgan who has sold out his KiwiSaver fund to KiwiBank. Here’s hoping it was nice and lucrative for him so he can continue to fund the funerals of homeless people, and provide fattened penguins to South Seas orcas.

That’s tongue in cheek. It is nice to see anyone get rich, or richer.

But since Gareth Morgan has been calling for a capital gains tax, I invite him to do as he preaches, and pay some of his capital gain for his business back to the government. IRD helpfully has an online provision for this.

After all, as Gareth lectured us in the Herald in July of this year:

“The principle of taxation is that those with the greatest ability to pay tax should shoulder the greatest burden and those with the least should be the greatest beneficiaries of State redistribution.”

Get on with it Gareth. Lead by example. Pay out 28% of your capital gain on GMI to the state.

Cheers, and thanks again for your generosity. First penguins, then Blanketmen, then this selfless act of self-taxation. Homeless people and desperate penguins are counting on you.

Tagged: • • • • • •

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  • bb

    nice. like it but doubt he will pay. after all unicef are doing well out of him too.

  • Karl Laird

    You’re not getting Sam Morgan and Gareth Morgan confused in some this?

    • http://www.whaleoil.co.nz Whaleoil

      Nope, Gareth morgan made a shit load off his sone Sam Morgan, it is actually where Gareth got his money from, not by being a broken arsed economist.

      • Vlad

        He wasn’t too bad as an economist, at least his briefings had plenty of wisecracks & laughs & were worth attending for entertainment.  Content wasn’t too damaging either.  However he is getting so noble and all-knowing that he deserves the (very funny) poke in the eye that you delivered. 

      • Dion

        Yeah, Gareth Morgan’s analysis isn’t too bad.

        But I do get thoroughly sick of him (and his son) saying “I should pay more tax” without putting their money where their mouth is.

      • Anonymous

        I certainly do not begrudge people profiting from investments and good on the Morgans and their Trade Me fortune. In my mind there is also nothing wrong with being charitable and if he wants to spend his own money, not the taxpayers’ on Ben Hana’s funeral (I think it is disrespectful to continue calling him Blanket man) then that is his business.

        I have no issue with Gareth Morgan’s success. However, now it is his time to start a grass roots movement where wealthy people start paying capital gains tax for the good of the common man. Otherwise he should keep quiet and do what most wealthy people do now and quietly give to charities of their choosing.

      • Troy

        Morgan has always been leech, and no doubt will continue to be so.  He knows stuff all about twat – pity he just doesn’t retire away to an island somewhere… perhaps Auckland Isl will do.

  • beenthere

    “The principle of taxation is that those with the greatest ability to pay tax should shoulder the greatest burden and those with the least should be the greatest beneficiaries of State redistribution.”

    I guess he hasn’t read Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand then..

    • Groans

      Nor has he read “Tax is stealing from me” by Groans

  • Karl Laird

    Of course there seems to be a good synergy between GMI and Kiwibank in them both being fantastic examples of how you can perform like sh*t but as long as you get the right press people will love you anyway

    • Guest

      Like two lame men tying their legs together in the hope they will run faster.

    • excuse me

      If Morgan made any profit on the sale, then Kiwibank paid too much. Gareth Morgan Kiwisaver was an unsuccessful investment manager – my GMK account is still well behind break-even after more than 4.5 years. It has lost about 12% over that time. I suspect that Morgan has bailed out because he knows he’s not good enough at this stuff.

      • Adamsmith1922

        agree

      • bb

        this sounds about right. from what i have read he has purposely been over conservative with investments with g.m.i. and conservative reporting. his conscience is bigger than the likes of peter huljich.

      • Guest

        KiwiSaver would have seen value in buying GMI, because they will now have the chance to cross sell services to all of GMI’s clients:

        - banking services
        - insurances
        - mortgages

        Once you get someone to change banks, they stay with you for 10 years plus easy. KB would have seen the growth stream from KiwiSaver as secondary to the ability to put Mrs Jones of Porirua into a nice KiwiBank mortgage with Kiwibank insurance, paid from her KiwiBank account.

    • Kapow

      Too true. I had invested with GMI and just went backwards – they bang on about how other fund managers overcharge fees and they dont, but it is clearly their way of distracting investors on how badly they perform. 

    • Anon

      Karl – and the Taxpayer pays for it via accounting moves by NZ Post, who subsidise Kiwi Bank regularly to keep them in Reserve Bank solvency rules.

      • Karl Laird

        You might want to re-read my post; you seem to be repeating the point I made :-p

  • Thorn

    “And Brutus is an honorable man”.

  • Frederico

    Good god this wouldn’t be him too would it…!
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/6276727/Zion-cats-safe-for-now-court-hears

  • kevin

    NZ has been very kind to the Morgans…

    • http://www.whaleoil.co.nz Whaleoil

      Time he put a bit back through a voluntary capital gains tax

      • Bob

        I agree, let him put his money were his mouth is…

      • Balanced View

        Nice to see you preaching from the left for once Whale! To be honest, never thought I’d see the day…..

      • phronesis

        Are you kidding? The Govt wastes most of the tax it takes in on bureaucracy and troughers. He would do more good driving round throwing cash out the window than giving it to the Govt. The whole point of being right wing is to encourage people to become wealthy enough so they can spend their OWN money doing something useful in the community. Gareth needs this explained to him not encouraged to waste his money on the Govt as he continually seems to want to.

  • Gazzaw

    Susan Wood just asked Morgan the question on ZB. Not surprisingly he will not be paying any tax. He sounded a tad incredulous when Susan put the question and said that he has never proposed a CGT rather a tax on capital.

     

  • Kosh103

    Meh, good on him.

  • Arnie

    I will swap my Kiwi Saver now, and don’t forget in my opinion he still has more tax deductions than than my total earnings.So his call for more Tax does not add up to me.

  • tas

    He donates to charity because he knows that doing so does more good than giving  to the government will.

    If he, or anyone for that matter, thought government welfare programs were more effective than a decent charity, then he would hand money to the govt. He doesn’t, Bill Gates doesn’t, I don’t, No one does, and that speaks volumes.

    • Boss Hogg

      Tas – fair and partly valid point on the surface of it.  However – Morgan preaches for others to pay tax and he fluffs around with his “Tax on Capital” ideas, etc etc.

      Donations to charity are without question more efficient at getting some wealth to recipients than tax……….but what has he and his trust(s) or foundation(s) actually given?  Does anyone know.  I would be pleased to be impressed.

      I still think he is a self promoting pompous man with a funny voice that needs CK to pluck his top lip – one whisker at a time.

  • Alex

    From the NZ Herald:

    “Morgan is known for his forthright economic rationalist views, and
    philanthropy after his big pay-day as an early investor in online
    auction site Trade Me when it was sold to Fairfax Media for some $700
    million.”

    What a load of BS on both accounts. 

    Forget his CCT, I find his “universal basic income” idea alarming: 

    http://www.gmi.co.nz/bigkahuna/universal-basic-income.aspx\

    I fear Labour will adopt this idea very soon (paying Morgan some enormous consultancy fee I should imagine).  Of course it is dressed up as perfectly rational and sensible, but every election year the left wing parties will promise to increase the UBI; and NZ will have an even larger group of under productive, over reproducing people who do nothing and rely on the UBI as their only source of income. 

  • MrV
  • Richard

    ““The principle of taxation is that those with the greatest ability to pay tax should shoulder the greatest burden and those with the least should be the greatest beneficiaries of State redistribution.”

    That’s not a principle of taxation.  That’s a principle of Marxism.  Fuckwit.

  • BR

    Gareth Morgan would be right at home among these folks:

    Bill.
     

  • The Blair which project?

    good to see nzpost actually making a sound investment for a change.

    why they would want to blow 20mil on sometrhing like ‘localist’ is anyones guess and a real cause for concern.

    lets hope they quit that dog before they rack up another 20mil in losses…..

    • MEthinks

      Is it a “sound investment”? Not sure if those who chose GM to look after there kiwisaver a/c are likely to be happy with Kiwi Bank. How much of the investment will be left by Christmas? It’s a personality based business so unless GMs going to remain involved its unlikely to retain its value. So yep, I agree, lets quit the dog.  

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