As Mr Trotter reports this morning, there are a number of major differences between the schemes. Mr Kirk's Scheme was reasonable, but failed because it did not get enough spin doctoring to sell the product. The opposite is true of the effort being made by Labour to get their hands on your money through another tax. The current product is total crap, has not been well thought out and is being implemented on the fly to meet the end of the month startup.
Some differences are noted below;
- Your money (capital and interest) is NOT government guaranteed.
- Managing your money will attract presently undefined 'reasonable fees' as decided by the provider.
- Your provider is not under any pressure to make any profit on your money.
- Your provider is not compelled to invest ethically.
- It is not a freebie top-up from your employer, it is a direct tax on your nett wages.
On top of that, a future government will look at the funds and say goodbye NZ Super, we do not need to provide that anymore. At that point your funds in Kiwisaver will be your only super, they had better have made heaps to take you through your dotage. Also you can be sure that your current tax rate will drop because it is no longer supporting NZ Super from general taxes - Hell Yeah!.
Definitely not for me, I will continue to manage my own super funds, picking and choosing where I invest, not with some money grabber who put in the lowest bid to the government.
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