Some of us weren’t far off with the gambling levy, being an online service after all.
Actually some solid proposals there, I’m impressed.
2 million taxpayers <s>earning under the bottom threshold get nothing</s> earning under $30k get nothing to $2 per week, while the $1.5bn public transport half price fares scheme targeted to them is scrapped to give to higher earners.
It’s classic taking from the poor to give to the rich as usual.
Not to mention baking in a reliance on foreign House purchases and gambling to fund it all.
Eh? How is there two million people earning under the bottom threshold?
The lowest tax bracket is $14k, that chart doesn’t show anywhere close to two million people earning that little.
Oh whoops, youre right. 2 million earn under $30k, which is where the tables in national’s policy doc start. Under $14k get nothing, $14k to $30k get $2 a week.
I’ll give them some credit though, they’ve ruled out removing the new top rate labour put in, at least in the next term.
even if Labour leaves the government books in a mess, as is predicted
I have every confidence that they will spend their extra cash more wisely than any Labour government can.
sheer volume of government spending that is occurring under the Labour government
I don’t know about anyone else, but they always come off as unprofessional to me. I can agree with most of what they are proposing here, but if I voted on people not policy then I certainly wouldn’t pick them.
This year, Labour will spend 80 percent more than it did in its first year of office, amounting to $1 billion more in government spending every week.
I don’t even get what they are talking about. They are saying almost double the spend.
I found this hard to believe (without using some twisted definition) so I tried to find some data, but I don’t seem to be able to. Can anyone help find government expenditure by year? Found one showing expenditure going from 11B to 14B but that’s way too low, tax take is many times higher than that.
Superannuation and other social security make up the largest chunk of government spending (34%), followed by health at 22%, and education at 14%. Together these three things make up 70% of government spending.
Now IRDs tax take was about 81 billion in the year ended June 2018 (covers most of Labour’s first year). I haven’t found 2023 stats (might be too early) but the tax tax for the year to June 2022 was 113 billion. That’s about a 40% increase. Wage inflation (salaries increasing) over that same period was about 23% (to June 23 it’s 32%), so that increased tax take likely is a big part due to tax bracket creep - but they would have also had to pay out higher super, benefits, healthcare staff and teacher wages.
My main problem with the claim that Labour is spending $1 billion more a week in government spending than when they came into power, is that $52 billion is a lot of extra money for our government to spend. It’s almost half what the IRD takes in. This graph (set timeframe to Max) shows that debt fell significantly but then jumped again in 2023. Is this because of the flooding at the start of the year? Are National complaining about the money spent on a national emergency?
They likely have better data than I can search up online, but if Labour have borrowed money this year to handle the flooding and this has caused spending over and above revenue, that’s about the only scenario I can see as causing the 80% jump.
But if the borrowing is for a different reason, then what?
I guess this is just a big ramble/rant to say what is that extra money being spent on? National makes these claims but what if the investment is in flooding recovery or potholes or healthcare or education, maybe we would like the choice to know what it’s spent on before deciding if the government spending money is a bad thing?
We need to spend a lot more. We need to pay teachers and nurses and doctors more money. We need to spend more on infrastructure. We need to spend more on climate disaster mitigation. Labour is not spending enough and National will absolutely gut the public coffers.
I’m also surprised at some decent proposals in here, particularly changing the income tax thresholds which is long overdue. But it pays to keep in mind both major parties are guilty of promising a lot during elections and not keeping their promises once they get in.
I am worried about what their cut to “spending in back office functions in government departments” actually entails and what is considered non-core/frontline agencies. As it stands wait times for a lot of processes now are really long. It’s taken almost a full year for us to hear back from DIA over a mistake that was made on a birth certificate.
Not a fan of returning interest deductibility to rentals and reducing the brightline test again. Also continuing to call the Clean Car Fee a Ute Tax in the policy document is disingenuous.
Edit: Also not happy about scrapping public transport subsidies even though I don’t use it. And “Undoing Labour’s recent extension of 20 hours free early childhood education to two year olds.” I don’t think their FamilyBoost rebate/tax credit thing makes up for it.
The ute tax thing is genuinely disappointing, because I’ve talked to people who genuinely thought it was a tax on utes, and were surprised when I pointed out that other body styles also incurred it. There are also utes clean enough to not incur it.
A lot of this proposal is change for the sake of change, to be honest.
It does seem like it on further thought. I might not be smart enough to understand all the implications, but it does look very targeted to the middle class and up with very little for those on lower incomes.
It’s mostly aimed at full time workers, and will certainly help them a bit.
I’m also surprised at some decent proposals in here, particularly changing the income tax thresholds which is long overdue.
I’m least surprised by the income tax threshold changes. I’m pretty sure they have talked about it before, and in any case it’s a pretty normal thing for National to do (reduce income tax).
I am worried about what their cut to “spending in back office functions in government departments” actually entails and what is considered non-core/frontline agencies. As it stands wait times for a lot of processes now are really long.
They have said the cuts will come from the core agencies, the ones that most people interact with in a given year. I bet when they get into the detail of things they will have to renege on this promise.
It’s taken almost a full year for us to hear back from DIA over a mistake that was made on a birth certificate.
Have you been following up? It doesn’t sound typical. DIA deal with these things on a daily basis. If you’re talking about an overseas one, that’s a lot more difficult because it’s pretty common for people to get a new birth certificate from their home country with a new date of birth on it (in particular, making themselves a bit older so they can get superannuation). Those cases have a higher standard to meet.
Not a fan of returning interest deductibility to rentals and reducing the brightline test again.
I get the point of the interest deductibility thing, but realistically this just makes tax obligations more complicated to fulfill. I’d much prefer addressing the housing cost issue in other ways. Rentals are a business and businesses get to deduct their expenses.
Reducing the brightline test is, in my view, not good. It’s needed to balance out the lack of capital gains tax that would normally apply.
Edit: Also not happy about scrapping public transport subsidies even though I don’t use it. And “Undoing Labour’s recent extension of 20 hours free early childhood education to two year olds.” I don’t think their FamilyBoost rebate/tax credit thing makes up for it.
I missed those details. Sometimes I wonder who their target voter base is.
Have you been following up?
Yep followed up twice. This was for our daughter born Oct last year. We called them as soon as we got the birth certificate. The mistake was definitely my fault as I entered a date wrong. They said it would take a month or so. Followed up again in January as we hadn’t heard anything. They couldn’t find our original reference and said they had to resubmit again and it would take 4 months now. Only just received an email in the last week asking for more information. It’s not really an emergency so we didn’t bother chasing them after the second time.
Sometimes I wonder who their target voter base is.
I think we both know it trends towards the haves rather than the have nots…
It sounds like DIA still haven’t caught up after the COVID massive backlogs. About time for some public service cuts (apparently).
I think we both know it trends towards the haves rather than the have nots…
Sure, but a vote for Act is a vote for a National government. And many of that audience would never vote Labour. They need to be targeting the swingvote (say, reasonably well off people early in their careers with young kids).
I guess you’re right. However I think anyone that’s reasonably well off will take the policy at face value and be happy they get more benefits, at the cost of public services that they’re less reliant on.
I’m not really into politics and I’m more concerned with the future society my kids are going to inherit. I’m at a loss this year of who to vote for as they are all not giving me much hope.
We deserve a far better standard of politician in opposition to what we have now. Especially Luxon, the man is completely devoid of political nouse or charisma.
Maybe we’ve got the exact standard of politician that we deserve.
That’s a depressing thought.
I don’t see how you can say that given he is poised to win the election and give you a massive tax cut.
more extensive cuts to the public service
Devil is in the details with that one.
This package also increases support via the Working for Families system
This is essentially a form of welfare spending that is hidden in the IRD budget instead of swelling the MSD budget.
deleted by creator
Yes, probably in ways we can’t foresee, too.
deleted by creator
I mean, they lost my respect with the GST proposal, which every expert RNZ spoke to said was a stupid idea.
It’s a bit rough for those without dependents, I know I’ve not got a lot left at the end of the week.
Oh well.
Meh. For economist there exists an equal and opposite economist. I know the right wing hates the idea of people paying less at the supermarket but I think for every one of you who supposedly had respect for labour and now lost it there are lots of ordinary people who are looking forward to it.
I think New Zealand politicians rely on people here not knowing much about tax systems in other countries.
The way we freak out about it in our media and public forums, no one would guess that pretty much everywhere else in the Western world taxes capital gains, or that it’s totally normal to carve out consumption tax exemptions or lower thresholds.
We also tax capital gains though. The bright line test and all that.
Which is only meant to capture people who flip houses. And it looks like National wants to weaken even that again.
I am OK with capturing people who flip houses. I don’t think we should be punishing people for buying a house and living in it long term.
And fuck national. All they are going to do is to drive house prices back up again.
Your comment illustrates my wider point - people in New Zealand see a lot of CGT as “punishing people”, yet it’s just a normal tax on a profit in most countries, no more a punishment than taxing wages is a “punishment for working” or consumption tax is a “punishment for eating”.
Yeah I think National want house prices higher.
They’ve updated the story since I first read it, I’m not particularly impressed with the bright line being wound back to two years.
