An Auckland tax expert wants next week's Budget to deliver details on funding the first stages of the Government's ambitious $2 billion, 100,000-house KiwiBuild plan.
Bruce Bernacchi, a KPMG tax partner, hopes further information about funding, timing and location will be released next Thursday, revealing more about the huge affordable house-building plan.
"The official MBIE position is that the Government has committed $2 billion to KiwiBuild but when is that going to be spent and will Labour be able to keep its pre-election of ensuring debt to gross domestic product does not exceed 20 per cent? It's part of a broader question we have about this Budget. There are a lot of spending promises and the Government needs to provide further detail around this," he said.
But one Parliamentary source said the Government's half-year economic and fiscal update out in December included the $2b of capital funding needed for the policy, spread over three years. Therefore, it did not need to include any further funding for KiwiBuild in next week's Budget.
The Government expected to recycle the $2b many times over in order to build the 100,000 houses.
"In other words, the first batch of houses would be built with the $2b, finished, and then sold to the new home-owners. With the proceeds of the sales, this would fund the second batch of houses. As so on and so forth until the 100,000 are completed, recycled above 25 times over the next 10 years to fulfil the policy," the source said.