Helping Kiwi families get ahead
New Zealand can be a world-beating country where families enjoy high living standards and have opportunities to get ahead.
We’re home to some of the smartest, most innovative people on the planet, and we’re one of the world’s best food producers. We’re a place where people are not afraid to give it a go – they deserve to be rewarded for their hard work.
But in the past few decades, we’ve fallen further behind the countries we like to compare ourselves with – for example, our neighbour Australia. Our exports aren’t growing fast enough. Our businesses are struggling with red tape. And the Tax Working Group has found that our tax system has major problems with integrity, fairness, and incentives.
We need to encourage more businesses to invest, grow, and create well-paid jobs for Kiwis.
That’s how we’ll encourage our best and brightest young people to raise their families here, aspire to higher-paying jobs, and look forward to a comfortable retirement.
We have a good platform. Economic growth is stronger than expected and unemployment lower, thanks to a more stable global economy and National’s success in managing New Zealand through the recession.
But we need to take the next step.
Tax is just one policy lever we can pull to help rebalance and grow our economy.
National wants to create a tax system that strengthens the economy, rewards effort, and reduces tax avoidance.
As part of a package of tax changes in Budget 2010, we are looking at reducing personal taxes across the board and carefully considering a modest increase in GST to no more than 15 per cent.
We’re acutely aware that a rise in GST would have an impact on lower and middle income New Zealanders. Any increase would be accompanied by reductions in personal taxes, as well as up-front increases in benefits, NZ Superannuation, and Working for Families payments.
No decision has yet been made about increasing GST – we have asked for more work to be done on this.
We are also considering closing some of the gaps in the taxation of property. Change is needed because the current generous tax treatment has been distorting investment behaviour. Kiwis have $200 billion invested in rental properties – nearly four times the size of the sharemarket. In 2008, the sector produced a tax loss for the government, costing taxpayers $150 million.
Removing tax advantages for mostly high-income property investors and redistributing that revenue through personal tax cuts to Kiwi families would increase the fairness of the tax system.
National believes New Zealand can do so much better. We want a country and an economy that provides families with the incomes, incentives, and opportunities to get ahead. Improving our tax system is an important step towards that goal.
ENDS
New Zealand can be a world-beating country where families enjoy high living standards and have opportunities to get ahead.
We’re home to some of the smartest, most innovative people on the planet, and we’re one of the world’s best food producers. We’re a place where people are not afraid to give it a go – they deserve to be rewarded for their hard work.
But in the past few decades, we’ve fallen further behind the countries we like to compare ourselves with – for example, our neighbour Australia. Our exports aren’t growing fast enough. Our businesses are struggling with red tape. And the Tax Working Group has found that our tax system has major problems with integrity, fairness, and incentives.
We need to encourage more businesses to invest, grow, and create well-paid jobs for Kiwis.
That’s how we’ll encourage our best and brightest young people to raise their families here, aspire to higher-paying jobs, and look forward to a comfortable retirement.
We have a good platform. Economic growth is stronger than expected and unemployment lower, thanks to a more stable global economy and National’s success in managing New Zealand through the recession.
But we need to take the next step.
Tax is just one policy lever we can pull to help rebalance and grow our economy.
National wants to create a tax system that strengthens the economy, rewards effort, and reduces tax avoidance.
As part of a package of tax changes in Budget 2010, we are looking at reducing personal taxes across the board and carefully considering a modest increase in GST to no more than 15 per cent.
We’re acutely aware that a rise in GST would have an impact on lower and middle income New Zealanders. Any increase would be accompanied by reductions in personal taxes, as well as up-front increases in benefits, NZ Superannuation, and Working for Families payments.
No decision has yet been made about increasing GST – we have asked for more work to be done on this.
We are also considering closing some of the gaps in the taxation of property. Change is needed because the current generous tax treatment has been distorting investment behaviour. Kiwis have $200 billion invested in rental properties – nearly four times the size of the sharemarket. In 2008, the sector produced a tax loss for the government, costing taxpayers $150 million.
Removing tax advantages for mostly high-income property investors and redistributing that revenue through personal tax cuts to Kiwi families would increase the fairness of the tax system.
National believes New Zealand can do so much better. We want a country and an economy that provides families with the incomes, incentives, and opportunities to get ahead. Improving our tax system is an important step towards that goal.
ENDS
