Small Business Tax & employment Incentives.
Small business's in NZ (contractors and business's turning under $200K) should be given a stimulatory low tax rate for a provisional period of three years (Suggest 10%) and should be offered a $5K tax writeoff for every full time employee they take on.
I would also suggest a two year provisional tax holiday be connected to the employment of more than five people.
The small biz sector in NZ have been crucified over the last twenty year and yet they are the ones who employ most Kiwis! There has not been one single bit of policy aimed at them by any Govt yet they are the backbone of our workforce, NZ politicians ignore them completely and load them up to the point that they fail. For a small economy such as ours, this is economic suicide.
Take the anchors off small business and it will help unemployment a lot.
Dennis Dorney Wed 6 Aug 2014 8:42AM
A more useful solution might be to have a small business Bank which offered low-interest loans. One of the biggest problems for small business is that the commercial banks wont lend enough money to businesses because lending on housing is safer, and when they do lend to small business they push up the interest rates to offset the greater risk.
Building custom- built industrial parks should help as well. When I was in England I was struck by the number of small towns that each had its own industrial park.
Colin England Wed 6 Aug 2014 9:06PM
@dennisdorney We used to have such industrial parks here. Many places still do but the sprawl of our cities have put paid to many of them.
Guntram Shatterhand · Tue 5 Aug 2014 9:58PM
"There has not been one single bit of policy aimed at them by any Gov"
In 2003 the government set up the Small Business Advisory Group to provide small business input into lawmaking - it is still in operation. The Ministry of Economic development has a 'small to medium sized enterprise directorate' with more than 50 staff.