Labour's proposed Capital Gains Tax (CGT) is not just for the rich who may well deserve such tax, its net will encompass every NZ worker.
I am referring to KiwiSaver and all other saving schemes outside of that, including people who use their businesses and farms to provide for their retirement.
Whilst KiwiSavers can elect to join an income only fund, most will quite rightly belong to growth funds, many of which will be a mixture of income and growth.
The point is that growth is a nice word for capital gain. So the growth part of those funds will be impeded by a CGT which in turn affects the final sum on retirement.
The Labour Party leader says that withdrawals from KiwiSaver will not be subject to this new tax. That's true – because the fund itself will have paid its CGT many years, in fact in some cases, decades earlier.
This is a good example of how inhibiting CGT can be because people do switch their investment type savings at various times in their lives.
The downsides of CGT for the average New Zealander is far greater than the upside of collecting a new tax on windfall capital gains.

Bill Capamagian, Tauranga.