Kia ora and welcome to the NZ Politics community!
This is a place for respectful discussions about everything that's political and kiwi
This is an inclusive space where diverse opinions are valued, but please don't be a dick
Banner image by Tom Ackroyd, CC-BY-SA
Churches are one of their vote bases, there is no way they will amend the Charities Act.
Sounds suspiciously like yet another GST raise to me.
Whenever politicians make noises about helping the middle class specifically, that means they are going to take from the bottom not from the top.
My prediction is that they are going to raise the GST again or some other tax that will disproportionately hurt the lower and middle classes.
So they are proposing tax cuts, and the funding for these cuts are coming from....."somewhere".... ok got it.
But what they are really saying with this is, we actually need the revenue, but we really want to give tax cuts to win the election. So we want to associate the nats with the words "tax cut" and we want people to not focus on where the money will come from, money they obviously agree we need.
Assuming that the 4 targeted taxes are as "obvious" as the nats say they are, what is to stop labour saying. Wow those are great ideas, we will implement those things also.....along with our other ideas. Now I know that could never happen but one can dream....
I mean, a person working full time at minimum wage is very close to hitting the third tax bracket, and would do so if they worked only a small amount of extra hours. That's kinda ridiculous. I'm not too far off the fourth one, and I'm still doing my apprenticeship.
Labour really should have been making incremental changes changes to the brackets in line with inflation, but that ship has sailed.
Labour could definitely steal their ideas if they wanted, it would be a bit embarrassing for them though.
That seems very unlikely. The Herald is saying they understand charities and churches are keeping their tax exempt status:
This speculation was fuelled by Luxon and Willis refusing to confirm or deny such an idea. However, the Herald understands charities and churches will keep their current tax-exempt status.
Guess we're going to have to wait and see what their actual plan is. Wish they'd just tell us, instead of telling us they're going to tell us.
Yeah, I can't see National enacting something like that, unfortunately. Dreams are free though.
I'm prepared to be disappointed, but will wait to see what they actually announce.
Being the party of fiscal responsibility they should levy a capital gains tax and a land value tax, a pair of low hanging fruit that would net a good chunk of revenue as well as cooling the housing market.
But of course they're never going to do that, they'll off load the costs of their tax cuts on the poors by hiking GST by at least 2.5%.
Who wants to bet this was one of them?
I'd have a good laugh if Labour did this to get their one out first.
I bet you're right. This is an obvious one where people will wonder why they aren't paying tax now. I bet you've hit the nail on the head.
And if Labour was holding this one in reserve, it's pretty smart to release it now. National will have to make sure theirs is a little different from Labour's now.
Might be 4D chess. Maybe National were wondering what Labour were planning so decided to annouce that they would soon announce a tax policy so that Labour would show their hand.
Although, it does beg the question of why they haven't done this already, if it's as simple as National claim.
Kinda the problem when you're campaigning for your third term in office, it begs the question of why now.
The problem itself is not simple, and internationally governments have been wrestling with how to solve the issue. Even this article states they can't implement anything until 1 Jan 2025 because of an international negotiation agreement, but have said the legislation is ready to go if that fails.
Their proposal is relatively straightforward, but I would bet it won't stick around long term in that form. Some company or other will tell the govt they will bring something to NZ if they get an exemption and the govt (whichever is in power) will agree and then suddenly there will be exemptions all over the place.
A few people have mentioned they might possibly propose a GST raise. Is this actually popular with anyone/voters?
I didn't really pay attention to politics back then, but I remember when John Key raised GST, it wasn't that popular either
@eagleeyedtiger @Ilovethebomb my money's on GST rise. Also possible, that they announce but never implement a Microsoft tax and a proceeds of crime scheme.
Shifting from income to GST effectively means those foreign corporates pay more.
They did mention multiple sources of revenue, I suspect digital services will absolutely be one of them. Proceeds of crime, we already have that don't we?
I just can't see GST being popular at all.
@Ilovethebomb I see it as a crap sandwich, you put the gst (actually happening but unpopular) in-between two slices of vague but popular things that never actually evenuate.
Don't need to tax the churches, just remove "spreading religion" at a valid charitable act. The churches will get taxed on a big portion of their income.
I wonder if it's something like taxing movie productions or something like that which currently get big tax breaks. I feel like there's stuff in oil or mining with discounted tax too, though I can't remember specifics.
