NZ First Donors Behind Racing Tax Break Push as Peters Distances Himself From Industry Report

A leaked industry report calling for tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks for horse racing has thrown an uncomfortable spotlight on NZ First’s donor base, after it emerged that the men driving the proposal have together tipped $300,000 into the party’s coffers in 2026 alone.

The report, prepared by an advisory committee chaired by stud farm owner Sir Peter Vela, lays out the case that racing in New Zealand faces a structural deficit of more than $50 million a year. It warns the industry’s cash reserves will be gone by the end of the 2027/28 racing season unless the government steps in with a sweeping package of tax concessions for breeders and owners.

According to RNZ’s reporting, Vela himself has personally donated $150,000 to NZ First so far this year, on top of $65,000 he gave in 2023. Sir Brendan Lindsay and his wife Jocelyn have donated $100,000 in 2026 and gave $65,000 in 2023. Businesses associated with Nelson Schick contributed a further $50,000 this year. Together those racing-linked donations make up roughly 63 per cent of the $475,000 NZ First has banked in declared donations in 2026.

The committee that produced the report is a who’s who of the breeding and training industry. Alongside Vela and Lindsay, the panel included Mark Chittick, Greg Tomlinson, Ken Breckon, Australian-based trainer Chris Waller and Steve Thompson — figures with substantial commercial interests in the recommendations they have authored. Their proposals include faster depreciation rates for brood mares and yearlings, 100 per cent deductibility for the purchase of New Zealand-bred yearlings, a standard $2,500 valuation for homebred foals, GST pass-through treatment for breeding co-ownerships, and lifting the cap on horse co-ownership exemptions from five owners to fifteen before financial markets rules apply.

Each measure on its own sounds technical. Taken together they represent a substantial transfer of risk and cost from racing investors onto the general taxpayer, at a time when the wider economy is being squeezed by the fuel crisis and the coalition is publicly hunting for savings.

The report frames the package as a rescue mission for an industry in genuine trouble. Foal numbers are down 22 per cent over the past decade, the report notes, and there are around 500 fewer breeders than there were in 2015. Administrative costs across the sector run to roughly $91 million a year, and the audience is ageing, with weak engagement from younger New Zealanders. The committee argues that without intervention, the breeding side of the industry will collapse, taking jobs in the regions with it.

The political problem is who is making the case, and to whom. Winston Peters is both the leader of NZ First and the Minister for Racing. A letter from Vela accompanying the report stated that Peters had commissioned the work, and that the committee had spent 90 minutes meeting with the minister in February. After being contacted by RNZ, Vela acknowledged that this characterisation was incorrect.

Peters’ office has flatly denied any involvement in commissioning the report. NZ First party secretary Holly Howard told reporters, “The party has no awareness of the report you’re referring to.” A spokesperson for the minister has separately framed the work as a TAB NZ initiative rather than a ministerial request. That denial is doing a lot of work, given the report’s chair is also one of the party’s largest individual donors and met with the minister earlier this year.

There is precedent for caution. In Budget 2018, Peters as Racing Minister secured $4.8 million over four years for a tax deduction targeted at high-quality breeding horses. Inland Revenue had warned the policy could cost ten times that figure, putting the genuine exposure at around $40 million a year if the scope expanded to the roughly 7,000 horses a year that might qualify. Industry figures at the time complained the threshold was so high that almost no horses would actually meet it. The earlier scheme illustrated how breeding tax concessions can be both narrowly drawn and politically costly at the same time.

The current proposals are broader. Faster depreciation on brood mares alone could push the fiscal cost well above the 2018 settings, and the proposed lift in the co-ownership exemption from five to fifteen owners would change the regulatory perimeter for syndicated horse investments. Officials at Inland Revenue and the Financial Markets Authority would need to examine whether the relaxation creates room for retail investors to be drawn into syndicates without the disclosure protections that apply elsewhere in the financial system.

For the coalition the timing is awkward. National and ACT have spent recent weeks defending unpopular spending cuts in education and health, with rates capping disputes also rolling through Cabinet. A bespoke tax package for an industry whose biggest commercial players are also NZ First’s biggest donors will be hard to sell as fiscal discipline.

Labour and the Greens have not yet released formal responses to the leaked report, but both will have an obvious line of attack if any of the proposals make it into Budget 2026 or a subsequent tax bill. The opposition has been pursuing donations transparency reforms and will see the overlap between donor list and report authors as a textbook case study.

Peters has rebuilt much of his political career on the racing portfolio, and the industry’s commercial decline is a real policy problem. The harder question for the coalition is whether the minister can credibly take advice from a panel of his party’s largest donors on tax law that would directly enrich them.

Cabinet is expected to consider racing sector advice in the coming weeks ahead of Budget 2026. What do you think — is this a legitimate industry rescue plan, or a donor-driven tax grab? Have your say in the comments below.