Property investment, tax systems help propel super rich to greater wealth

Monday, 23 December 2019

When you think of the world's super rich, you might imagine billionaires on boats in Monaco, or Jeff Bezos - making a reported US$2500 (NZ$3797) a second.

But while we may not have rich people on an Amazonian scale, New Zealand isn't short of super wealthy.

According to Credit Suisse, New Zealand has 0.4 per cent of the world's top 1 per cent of wealth holders, despite only having 0.1 per cent of its population

Researcher and journalist Max Rashbrooke, who has studied wealth in this country, said there were nine families or individuals with wealth of at least $1 billion.

Quite a few we can guess at, like New Zealand's richest man Graeme Hart  — worth a reported $6.98 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaire index. There's Britomart developer Peter Cooper, and property magnate Sir Bob Jones, with a reported net worth in excess of $1 billion. Breaking the billion mark, too, was Xero founder Rod Drury.

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That's an amount that it would require 21,000 years of working for someone earning an annual $46,800 to accumulate. Or roughly the amount of time since the last ice age.

Then there are the rich people who drop in and out without being officially based here. That's people like Alexander Abramov, who's spending tens of millions developing Northland property. Or Peter Thiel, who is worth a reported US$2.5b and was made a citizen despite only spending 12 days in New Zealand.

To be a top 1 per cent earner you need to earn $235,001 a year or more. To be a top 1 per center by wealth you need about $8 million.

'New Zealand has always had wealthy people,' Rashbrooke said. 'They used to be discreet about it but in the last 20 or 30 years we have seen more displays of overt wealth.

'We don't have a lot of people who are wealthy in the global context but that's about as relevant as the fact that we don't have a lot of people who are poor in the global context. Everything is relative within New Zealand. Do we have a lot of people who are very wealthy in a New Zealand context? Yes, absolutely we do.'

HOW DID THEY GET THERE?

While you can earn your way into the top 1 per cent - former Fonterra boss Theo Spierings earnt $43m in his time in the job - most people who are very wealthy have become that way through their investments.

An Inland Revenue report on high wealth individuals found that 'in close to all cases' the wealthiest among us had got their capital base from the non-taxable sale of a business or other capital asset.

It classified high wealth individuals as people with more than $50m, or those with $20m and complex business structures. There were 11,585 people and entities which met that criteria last year, including 350 individuals.

Most seemed to have been boosted by property.

'The most popular business activity is property investment,' the report said, 'with 18 per cent of high wealth individuals having their wealth directly linked to property.'

It was followed by agriculture and technology.

But the way our tax system is structured also gave them a boost, and allowed them to keep building wealth at a rate not available to people who were paying tax on every dollar earnt.

Inland Revenue noted that the richest individuals had significant tax losses available to them from past activities. That meant they were able to offset the tax they might have had to pay on future income.

The department noted that the great majority of wealth was being generated by realised and unrealised gains on capital assets.

'This is supplemented by the ability to: claim interest deductions on the build-up of a capital asset; offset losses from the past building up of former business or capital assets with current income streams; pay well below market salaries for personal services provided to the business; and make fully deductible contributions to charities controlled by the HWI themselves.'

Rashbrooke said the wealthy individuals were not doing anything illegal - but the system allowed those who entered that sphere to keep growing their wealth.

Infometrics economist Brad Olsen said those with more wealth also tend to be the sorts of people who have the knowledge, resources, and avenues through which to structure their assets and liabilities.

'What this means is that those with higher wealth can often find ways to offset their tax and other cost liabilities to grow their wealth further. Your general wage and salary earners don't have the same avenues through which to structure their assets and liabilities to find offsets to what they need to pay in tax etc.

'Capital gains are certainly a key area for wealth accumulation, particularly with regard to property. It's not that no capital gains are taxed at all, but instead that certain asset classes (i.e. housing) is treated significantly differently from other assets.

'Essentially, the more wealth someone has, the more avenues they also have to manoeuvre their assets around to minimise their liabilities, at least compared to wage and salary only earners who have limited ways to minimise their liabilities. However, although the opportunities to minimise liability obligations exist still, there are far fewer options now than in the past.'

Property investor Graeme Fowler, who has said he was worth about as much as a big Powerball win, said investing in property was 'one of the surest' ways to get wealthy.

He estimated that eight of the top 25 richest New Zealanders had made money through property. Sir Bob Jones is one of the most high-profile, now worth an estimated $1b.

Fowler said even those who made money in other ways would often buy property as a way to store their wealth.

'To get seriously wealthy in New Zealand through property, say anything $20m-plus net worth, is easily achievable with the right mindset and focus. You also need to have good money habits, something that 99 per cent of people have no idea about.

'You have to understand the numbers well, have a big enough 'why' you want to become wealthy and a determination to keep you going, when most others would give up.

'Other investors will be satisfied with a lot less money, so they never really push themselves to their own potential and may be happy to settle for a couple of million dollars and an easy effortless lifestyle.'

INEQUALITY

Rasbrooke said the data that was available suggested wealth inequality had worsened in the past decade or two.

Fourteen per cent of New Zealand households are worth more than NZ$1.5 million. The rich by this metric are getting richer. The net worth of the richest 20 per cent of New Zealand households has risen $394,000 since 2015, to reach a median of $1.75 million.

The wealthiest 10 per cent of New Zealand households have 60 per cent of all wealth. The top 1 per cent have about a fifth. His earlier research showed that the richest 0.01 per cent of New Zealanders had wealth equal to 6 per cent of GDP in 1996 but that had reached 21 per cent by 2015.

'There's significant concentration of wealth already.'

If that continued, there could be a class divide developing that would mean the opportunities available to some were completely denied to others, he said.

But he said he expected to see more people enter the top wealth brackets.

'There are very few demands on wealthy people in New Zealand, no meaningful taxes on their wealth.'

Intergenerational transfers of wealth were a big aspect of many family fortunes, he said. Of the 250 wealthiest people, a third of the fortunes had a clear dynastic component, Rashbrooke said. The money had either been inherited or the current generation was actively involving the next generation in its business affairs.

He said straightforward transmission of wealth would be vastly greater again.