Written By: - Date published: 4:34 pm, May 23rd, 2012 - 8 comments
Bill English has introduced a number of stealth taxes over his time in office, to partly balance the loss his tax cuts for the rich has generated. The latest in this budget will be prescription costs and raising the price of Early Childhood Education (again). We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out if …
Written By: - Date published: 2:53 pm, May 16th, 2012 - 73 comments
The Herald recently carried a story about an Auckland couple – Simon Mabin and Chantelle Joseph – who bought a 970 square metre vacant section in Parnell two years ago, and sold it last month for $2m – more than twice as much as what they paid for it. They did absolutely nothing to the …
Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, May 14th, 2012 - 11 comments
Remember National’s ‘fiscally neutral’ tax cuts? Turns out they’ve cost $2 billion in their first 18 months. Now, the Right’s story changes, of course. Without those reckless tax cuts, we wouldn’t be facing zero budgets. They were never meant to be fiscally neutral, they were stimulus spending – right, cause this economy is so stimulated.
Written By: - Date published: 7:40 am, May 9th, 2012 - 37 comments
The government has a $1.8 billion income shortfall. But it’s alright, it’s not their fault… Their policies don’t affect the economy. Unless they need to take credit. 6.7% unemployment? Nothing to do with us, and nothing to do with our tax shortfall…
Written By: - Date published: 10:58 am, May 6th, 2012 - 59 comments
Land prices rising much faster than wages. Shares, derivatives, hedge funds or other financial instruments are designed so that banks can gamble with our money. Win or lose they always get a cut. Loss comes out of our pensions and other savings. Or, if they really stuff it up, taxpayers are expected to borrow more from them to pay for it. Banks following their own self interest and are compounding economies to oblivion. The “invisible hand” has failed..
Written By: - Date published: 6:33 am, April 26th, 2012 - 17 comments
Tax increases on working people: GST hike, replaced Labour’s cuts with cuts for the rich, put tax on your employer Kiwisaver contributions, cut WfF tax credits. Record emigration to Australia: 53,237 last year, 1000+ per week.
Written By: - Date published: 8:38 am, April 11th, 2012 - 12 comments
As the Nats try to spin us into accepting another zero budget, focus is turning to 2 big holes that their policy decisions have created. First, the $1b+ a year spend on the low to negative value Roads of National (Party) Significance. Second, the $1b+ annual cost of the 2010 tax changes. That’s $2b+ that could be spent elsewhere, avoiding spending cuts without more borrowing.
Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, April 5th, 2012 - 30 comments
On Monday, Key said his tax cuts have been “literally fiscally neutral”. In Parliament yesterday, Russel Norman showed Treasury documents showing the 2010 tax changes were to forecast to cost $1.1b in 4 years, actually cost $1.1b in 9 months, and the cost has grown since. Key didn’t want to hear the Treasury numbers, instead waving some ‘billshit’ put together by the Finance Minister.
Written By: - Date published: 3:50 pm, April 4th, 2012 - 45 comments
The “fiscally neutral” tax cuts never were neutral at all, and a lower than expected tax take is hitting the government’s books. But Key is still out there repeating the lie.
Written By: - Date published: 7:07 am, March 19th, 2012 - 103 comments
David Farrar has had a go at David Clark for supposedly blaming (or crediting, Farrar can’t make up his mind) National for the revenue loss resulting from Labour’s 2008 tax cuts after Clark said that National’s tax cuts have sucked 2.5% of GDP out of the Crown’s revenue, widening the deficit by $5b a year. Either Farrar can’t read or he’s desperately spinning.
Written By: - Date published: 10:58 pm, March 14th, 2012 - 56 comments
He must resign. Surely. Here is Key, speaking to the PSA in 2008, making very specific promises about public service jobs, tax cuts, and asset sales that helped him get elected. Promises he has since broken. There’s no excuse. He wasn’t blind-sided by events. He made these promises never intending to keep them. Key is refusing to comment but if the man has any ethics he’ll resign.
Written By: - Date published: 8:02 am, March 7th, 2012 - 53 comments
Police numbers are going to be slashed. Diplomats too. And nurses. All up, 2,500 jobs gone so far for $20m saved. And it turns out more than half the government’s new doctors don’t exist. Big public sector strikes may be coming. Every time you read this stuff, remember National’s tax cuts for the rich. The $1.1b for ‘fiscally neutral’ tax cuts last round alone. That’s where the money went.
Written By: - Date published: 11:26 am, January 2nd, 2012 - 104 comments
An earlier post by Mike Smith on inequality referred to a claim by Geoff Vincent that 12% of the taxpayers were paying 49% of the the taxes. Now this was patently a spinners interpolation on the tax data and shouldn’t be part of the debate.. A comment by DH has a look at that bullshit. …
Written By: - Date published: 8:19 am, December 19th, 2011 - 44 comments
Key: “Of course, if we could have lower personal taxes, we think that would stimulate the economy – but we just can’t afford it”. But, if tax cuts stimulate the economy, you could make them self-funding. The 2010 tax changes were meant to pay for their net cost with extra growth. Didn’t happen. They’ve cost $1.1b so far. Does Key still buy this trickle down garbage or not?
Written By: - Date published: 9:33 pm, December 13th, 2011 - 81 comments
Phil O’Reilly’s article in today’s DomPost headed “The rich get richer but so do the poor ” is appalling. Responding to the OECD report on inequality, he is following in the footsteps of Alasdair Thompson. BusinessNZ are still dinosaur employers from the Victorian age.
Written By: - Date published: 9:02 am, December 6th, 2011 - 33 comments
Tax take is down, deficit is up, growth forecasts for next year are down. Nice to be told all this one week after the election, eh? Still John and Bill are relaxed and optimistic that the future will still be bright.
Written By: - Date published: 7:31 am, November 10th, 2011 - 52 comments
How many children is 200,000 in the context of New Zealand’s population? Statistics New Zealand says between June 2008-2011 around 62-64,000 children were born each year. So 200,000 amounts to every single child born in this country since National came to power three years ago, plus another 10,000 or so.
Written By: - Date published: 8:40 am, November 8th, 2011 - 30 comments
Yes, that’s an actual quote [sans 'serfs'] from David Farrar lying about his master John Key’s lies about not raising GST.
hattip: frank macskasy
Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, October 14th, 2011 - 7 comments
This press release from the CTU deserves wide discussion.
Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, October 8th, 2011 - 90 comments
When John Key was elected to power in 2008, he was estimated to have a personal wealth of about 40-50 million dollars.
So how much is John Key worth now?
Written By: - Date published: 9:20 am, September 23rd, 2011 - 53 comments
As most of the headlines this morning focus on the crumbling world economy, it was interesting to hear Bill English on RNZ. Among various inane comments there was one interesting gem, when English called for higher taxes…
Written By: - Date published: 11:29 am, September 14th, 2011 - 64 comments
The other day, Irish covered the odious comments from liquidator/columnist Damien Grant calling unskilled people ‘commodities’. That was in the context of a pretty flimsy attack on Gareth Morgan and Susan Guthrie’s ‘Big Kahuna’ tax plan. Yesterday, Morgan and Guthrie responded to Grant’s attacks. The Jackal says Morgan and Guthrie have it right.
Written By: - Date published: 5:38 pm, September 10th, 2011 - 67 comments
John Armstrong wants Labour to come out radically different after the Cup. Having refused to cover Labour’s skills package or its mining policy, he’s suddenly interested in policy. He wants Labour to suddenly adopt league tables and forget the 39% tax rate. Armstrong genuinely doesn’t seem to get it. Parties of the Left don’t pick and swap policies on a whim.
Written By: - Date published: 5:28 pm, September 6th, 2011 - 19 comments
Treasury has now adopted their masters’ political line on income statistics. The latest Treasury MEI uses average after-tax wages to argue that an average worker is better off by 2% since October 2010. In real terms the average worker’s gross wage less inflation means they are 1% worse off. The average of $50,000 a year is a long way above the median wage as indicated by the 2009 IRD distribution figures. In reality a few are hugely better off, some are ok, and most are still worse off.
Written By: - Date published: 11:51 am, September 3rd, 2011 - 14 comments
Guns don’t kill people, the old saw goes. People do. By the same token, corporations don’t dodge taxes. People do. The people who run corporations are reaping awesomely lavish rewards for the tax dodging they have their corporations do. A report from the Institute of Policy Studies shows that 25 major U.S. corporations last year paid their chief executives more than they paid Uncle Sam in federal income taxes. Creative accounting is also a problem here.
Written By: - Date published: 12:41 pm, September 2nd, 2011 - 29 comments
The wealthy elite in Europe are now joining Warren Buffett in these calls for higher taxes for the rich (including CGT), why? Maybe it’s because they know the truth, they know that the world is likely to enter another global recession, and they know the risk this will bring to social cohesion, which they rely on for maintaining the lifestyle they enjoy.
Written By: - Date published: 12:17 pm, August 28th, 2011 - 21 comments
Like many countries worldwide, New Zealand has an aging problem. Digging around the available charts it isn’t hard to see why. But New Zealand has less of a problem than many developed countries because of the demographics of our Maori and Pacifica populations plus the continuing immigration. It is still pretty bad.
Written By: - Date published: 12:19 pm, August 25th, 2011 - 42 comments
Angry Old White Man Party (ACT) Leader Don Brash is to launch another attack on young people. It’s strange that this once significant and principled party has sent its dying days picking the on the young. The latest stupid idea is to remove the minimum wage for under 20s altogether and cut spending to cut taxes that the rich pay.
Written By: - Date published: 6:17 am, August 24th, 2011 - 105 comments
Gareth Morgan and Susan Guthrie’s piece in the Herald brilliantly elucidates the crisis of capitalism and the inadequacy of an economic system that only recognises value in work that produces market goods and services. Their book, The Big Kahuna, on their alternative tax system has just been published and I found these videos of Morgan explaining.
Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, August 20th, 2011 - 21 comments
France and Germany are leading the way on the “Robin Hood” tax, and a Europe wide implementation could be the next step. Bring it on!
Written By: - Date published: 2:04 pm, August 16th, 2011 - 53 comments
Today Warren Buffett, the third wealthiest man in the world, has come out demanding his mega-rich friends play a part in the American economic recovery. He is recognised as one of the smartest and most successful investors alive, his words should not be dismissed lightly, especially as we approach our own election and grapple with the issue of tax reform.
Comments