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Dear Friend, Reminder to book your 2025 holiday before Monday! App Tax delivered in 36 hours 📲🏠
This April Fool's Day, don't let the joke be on you! The App Tax (Labour's idea that National promised to scrap) will see the cost of Ubers and Airbnbs, Bookabach, and other online platforms increase their prices by as much as 15%. So if you're planning a family getaway for later in the year, book now to avoid Grant Robertson's Nicola Willis' App Tax. Come Monday, GST will be slapped on the micro-business mom-and-pop bach or spare bedroom rental providers and part-time Uber drivers who currently fall below the $60,000 GST registration threshold. This App Tax-grab was never about the multinational providers like Airbnb (they already pay GST). But that's who Wellington want you to think this tax is all about, despite IRD being clear: the tax is on the little guy trying to make ends meet. It's time for tax relief 💸⏰This week the Nicola Willis released the 2024 Budget Policy Statement. BPSs essentially set out the framework the Government will take to tax and spending decisions as it prepares its May budget. The fiscal challenges facing the coalition Government are well known: delivering promised tax relief; curbing Grant Robertson's unsustainable legacy of deficits (the Government Debt Clock is close to being blown to bits); reducing public sector wasteful spending; and ramping up infrastructure delivery. And this impossible matrix of priorities has to be achieved in a period of stagflation (an economy in recession but with high inflation/interest rates). Ouch.
Perhaps as a result of the conflicting priorities, this year's document is lighter on on detail than usual. But two points jump out: 1.The scale of the Government's spending problem is even worse than previously known: Between 2016/17 and 2023/24 (forecast), core Crown expenses have grown 84 per cent, compared to a 52 per cent increase in nominal GDP and a 66 per cent increase in core Crown revenue. While tax revenue has been growing well ahead of New Zealand's economy, Wellington's spending has totally blown out. The result: unbelievable rates of borrowing plug the difference. 2. Even Wellington's boffins are recognising the harm of inflation dragging Kiwis into higher tax brackets and forcing workers to pay more tax each year on the same 'real' income: Delivering meaningful tax reductions to provide cost of living relief to New Zealanders, who have seen no change in personal income tax rates and thresholds since 2010. The inflation tax costs the average Kiwi $2,500 a year 🔺💰
The failure to adjust tax brackets since 2010 means that someone on the median salary of $65,749 is now paying $2,496 more in tax each year than they would have done had tax bracket thresholds kept pace with inflation in the same way that we do for payments to beneficiaries or superannuitants. The average worker's pay buys less, but is taxed more!
>> Calculate how it affects you << And don't expect National's promised tax relief to ride to the rescue. National's so-called promised 'tax cuts' only compensate for two of the 13 years of stealth tax increases! A step in the right direction, but hardly the 'right wing' slash and burn the media would have you believe! Speaking of the media bemoaning "cuts" 👀Isn't it weird the way media don't provide context to scary stories about the nasty Government reducing jobs? Here's Newshub's angle about the very important front line back office agency you'd probably never have heard of had it not been for their $40k farewell parties: the Ministry of Pacific Peoples.
As a well known Taxpayers' Union supporter put it: Oh man how will the Ministry for Pacific People cope with a 50% reduction in staff? Here's some context not included in the Newshub reporting:
And media wonder why the public's trust is falling? Ruapehu: Throwing good money after bad, after bad, after bad, after bad ⛷️🔥From the déjà vu file, the Taxpayers' Union has again been the ski lift party pooper in calling out the Government's yet-again 'last bailout' announcement to gift $7 million to Ruapehu Alpine Lifts' Whakapapa ski field. This is the fifth multi-million-dollar taxpayer bailout in the last 18 months alone. Even with the $27 million bung in the last two years to try to make the field commercially viable and able to pay its debts, it still isn't. Despite claims that these handouts are necessary to save jobs in the region, corporate welfare shifts money from productive sectors of the economy into unproductive ones. Rather than save jobs, here it's more likely saving the bankers who lent to the ski field operator and risk the company going bust. But other ski fields around New Zealand successfully run on a commercial basis without taxpayer bailouts. Maybe it's time to let the company fold and get a new team in to have a go?
Some good news for Easter! Landlord interest deductibility restored from Monday with bright line test reduced 🎉✅It's not all bad news. The Government did deliver two taxpayer wins this week: Interest deductibility for landlords reintroduced. The current distortion in interest deductibility rules unfairly targets landlords and reduces long-run incentives for landlords to provide housing. The changes passed yesterday will finally put an end to this imbalance. Bright-line test reduced to two years. The bright-line test is a capital gains tax by stealth. It completely misses the problem when it comes to housing prices which is not enough supply – the only way to do this is with proper RMA reform, which the Government has committed to deliver. We would like to see the bright-line test scrapped entirely but this is a welcome first step. Labour now know how they'll win the next election! With more taxes... 🤦♂️🥀 |
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Media
Mentions:
Newshub Christopher
Luxon rules out new taxes, says 'relief is
happening'
Newstalk ZB The
Huddle: Peters v Chumbawamba – who's in the
right?
NZ Herald Christopher
Luxon’s inner circle – the Prime Minister’s most important
advisers
1News Govt
plan to extinguish youth vaping: What you need to
know
RNZ The
Panel with Sue Bradford and Sue
Thomas (4:05)
Northland
Age From
the other side – explosion of agendas a baffling
phenomenon
Stuff Richlister
behind Les Mills gym empire reveals why he donates to political
parties
SunLive Economy
slips into recession as GDP falls 0.1%
Taupo
Times Ruapehu
bailout 'corporate welfare'
The Post Call
to end restraint of trade clauses that appear in job contracts
everywhere
Press
Releases:
Grant
Robertson interview demonstrates why he should never have been finance
minister
Luxon
must rule out new taxes, not adopt Labour’s approach
Taxpayers'
Union stands down from high alert after sleepless night
Capital
city deep in crisis needs more housing
Disposable
vape ban will drive people back to smoking
New
Zealand in recession as Kiwis' quality of life tanks
IMF
right to call for slashing government waste
Government
needs to stop tinkering and pop the ballooning
bureaucracy
Taxpayers’
Union welcomes the wheels turning on RMA reform
Chris
Hipkins out of touch with New Zealand’s tax system
Pseudo-savings
must be called out and halted
Small
Wellington businesses punished by swipe at drivers for no
gain
If
the CCP can see politicians' expenses, so should
taxpayers
Government
must cut spending and provide permanent tax relief
Two
steps forward, one step back for taxpayers
Government
must not continue Labour legacy of special treatment for
DJs
New Zealand Taxpayers' Union Inc. · 117 Lambton Quay, Level 4,
Wellington 6011, New Zealand
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