David Seymour was talking a load of old nonsense yesterday, wasn’t he, when he announced the tax changes for landlords?

Now let me make it clear, right from the start, I am not anti-landlord. Because imagine where we’d be if we didn’t have people willing to take risks, buy properties, and make them available for other people to live in.

So we need landlords. Good ones, anyway.

But the ACT leader and Associate Finance Minister was pushing it uphill when I saw him on the news last night telling us that tax relief for landlords is a win-win for the landlords and renters.

This year landlords will be able to claim 80 percent of their mortgage interest costs. Next year, 100 percent. And they’re going to pass those savings on to the people renting their properties. Yeah right.

“Landlords,” David Seymour said, “have been hit with a double whammy of rising mortgage interest rates and increasing interest deductibility limitations during a cost-of-living crisis.”

Hearts across the country would have been bleeding, I’m sure.

He was right, though, when he said: “These costs are inevitably passed on to tenants.”

But does he really expect us to believe that any savings will also be passed on to tenants? Of course, they won’t. And I’ll tell you why.

Remember last year when we were all piling into Labour for its no GST on fruit and veggies policy? And how we were saying it was daft because, after about five minutes, we’d have no idea whether we were paying less for the broccoli and apples or not.

It’s exactly the same with these tax changes for landlords. For example, if you’re renting a place, you’ve got no idea what size mortgage the landlord has on the place, which means you have no idea how much interest they’re paying.

You don’t know what their insurance costs are…you know pretty much next to nothing.

So how on earth are you going to know how much better off the landlord is once they can deduct mortgage costs and pay less tax? The answer is - you’re not.

And that’s just one factor as to why this change isn’t going to be the win for renters that David Seymour and the Government say it’s going to be

In fact, I heard Property Federation president Sue Harrison say as much. She said a lot of factors influence rent prices and there’s no one simple answer. Which is what David Seymour was trying to sell to us yesterday. That tax deductaility for landlords is the simple answer.

Another reason why these changes aren’t the great news for renters the Government says they are, is that people are renting like it’s going out of fashion. Demand is through the roof.

Remember those numbers from Stats NZ last week, which showed a big upswing in the number of active rental bonds. Which was the clearest evidence yet that more places are being rented out. And the experts are saying one of the big reasons for that is migration.

Christchurch and Auckland are where rent prices are going up the fastest. You pretty much can’t get anywhere for less than $500 a week here.

That’s because the market dictates everything. Truckloads more people are coming here. And more and more people already living here are renting, because they can’t afford to buy a house anymore.

So boom times for landlords.

And I know if I owned a rental property - which I don’t - but if I did, I’d sure as hell be wanting to maximise my investment. Why wouldn’t I? What’s more, it’d be making hay while the sun shines.

Which is yet another reason why we’re not going to see rent prices go down because of these tax changes. When you run a business of any sort, you make what you can - while you can. And being a landlord is a business.

For most people it’s a side hustle. For a few, it’s how they make their living. But it’s a business. And, when you’re in business, you do what you can to get ahead - just in case things go a bit pear-shaped in the future.

So why on earth would you charge your customers less, just because you might be paying a little less tax? Well, the answer to that, is you wouldn’t.