Council proposes gouging landowners with new taxes, Kiwi-owned training firm under fire in Australia, Hunter’s Corner: Paying for peanuts

In NBR Print today: Auckland Council is poised to make hundreds of millions of dollars at the stroke of a pen. It is looking at a “value capture” tax to gouge money from owners of substantial blocks of land that are rezoned for housing, reports Sally Lindsay. A slice of the land’s increased value would be taken through the tax and used to pay for infrastructure. “We are not trying to get in the way of landowners making a good deal on their property but the council needs to look at the equity and fairness for ratepayers, who, with that stroke of the council’s pen, suddenly have a big infrastructure bill in front of them for the land’s development,” deputy mayor Penny Hulse says.

Starting from yesterday, foreign investors in residential property face a new regime of tax data collection. No longer can foreigners hide behind nominees and their home countries may access the tax data collected here. Small wonder foreign buyers have gone very quiet, writes Michael Coote.

Like a well-fed sumo wrestler squeezed into airline cattle class, Fonterra [NZX:FCG] can’t help bulging uncomfortably all over the New Zealand economy, writes Tim Hunter.  This overflowing influence is awkward in many ways, not least for the dairy co-op’s chief executive Theo Spierings whose bulky pay packet barely fits the figure-hugging Kiwi style. At $4.9 million, it’s a muffin of monetary incentives. However, the real problem with his pay isn’t its size, which is not excessive in a global context, but its link to performance.

The next wave of cyber-attacks won’t steal company data, they will change or destroy it – a true nightmare for most companies in the digital age. Nathan Smith reports.

Stride Properties [NZX:STR], formerly DNZ Property Fund, may float its big-box retail assets into a special purpose vehicle but that isn’t the only option, chairman Tim Storey tells Jenny Ruth.

A New Zealand-owned training provider in Australia is facing a regulatory probe and a potential class action over allegations of shonky practices. Evocca College, based in Springwood south of Brisbane, is owned by New Zealanders who had previously owned Quantum Education Group before its sale to NZX-listed Intueri [NZX:IQE] last year. Tim Hunter investigates.

The country’s white collar criminals are gaining an advantage over their blue-collared brethren when it comes to the monetary and reputational factors considered in their sentencing. that's the view of Professor Lisa Marriott, of Victoria University’s School of Accounting and Commercial Law, who has been studying hundreds of court reports for prosecutions taken by the Serious Fraud Office. Nick Grant dissects the data.

A man tied up in a Serious Fraud Office government corruption probe has been found guilty of tax fraud of more than $1 million, having spent the money on luxury cars, apartments and “entertainment.” Hamish McNicol reports.

Debt is big business, and Baycorp has just been snapped up by the world’s biggest debt collector. Both companies see benefits in this strategic merger – but a flick through Baycorp New Zealand’s annual report shows the debt collector was in debt itself. Calida Smylie reports.

Obvious signs of growth are the first place to look for stocks in a market that is constantly being hit sideways by extreme reactions to long-term trends such as the slowing Chinese economy and the pending interest rate rise in the US, writes Nevil Gibson in Margin Call.

Meanwhile, Shoeshine tracks some large director share purchases in recent weeks in Heartland NZ [NZX:HNZ] and Skellerup Holdings {NZX:SKL] and asks what signals they are sending.

All this and more in today's NBR Print Edition. Out now.