Written By:
Steve Pierson - Date published:
9:30 pm, May 22nd, 2008 - 15 comments
Categories: tax -
Tags: budget 2008, families
Here are graphs of the portion of income going on tax and the portion of reduction in tax for Kiwis under the Budget’s cuts, with the population in each $10,000 bracket.
As you can see, the biggest percent reductions go to the bulk of the population. And everyone is paying at least 10% less tax by 2011. Most people are paying over 20% less.
It’s worth noting that, while John Key who is worth millions, smirks that $22 a week for the median income earner is only ‘a couple of blocks of cheese’, it’s also two hours work on the minimum wage, or four hours on the minimum wage under National.
Also, note these graphs don’t include the increases in Working for Families. There is a calculator here that lets you work out your cuts including WfF.
The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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Ahem the link to the calc could lose a few characters
chur Felix
Link whore time.
NewZblog’s thoughts on National’s post-Budget conundrum.
http://newzblog.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/great-expectations-will-national-live-up-to-them/
Baby steps Dr Cullen, baby steps, you can do this – you don’t need to extract tax from the poorest so you can redistribute it to people earning lots more than them with a few children.
It’s OK to not make low paid workers pay their way and it’s OK not to give people earning perhaps twice as much as them a free ride paying no tax at all, because they have children. Come on Labour, surely there is more to this election than bloating family benefits and buttons for the workers.
WFF credits yada yada, stop taking it off them in the first place and stop social engineering a population bulge and state dependency in your flagging core supporter demographic.
Having got that off my chest, the targeting to the low end of the income scale is good, just didn’t go anywhere near far enough after suffering the 1999 definition of low/middle/upper thresholds for 9 years. Labour reaping fiscal drag then after 9 years adjust still below neutral on the 1999 policy position. All set and ready for cancellations of the future cuts and back into increasing fiscal drag all over again. Yeh.
Good try Burt, but “stop social engineering a population bulge and state dependency in your flagging core supporter demographic” gives you away as spouting ideological gibberish. Goodnight.
Messenger, message… No need to divert the attention away from low paid workers funding middle class families by denigrating me. Sleep well.
Burt: I have to concur with r0b – that line above sounds suspiciously like Lindsay Perigo’s obscene `the government is bribing the poor to breed more Labour voters’ line.
If that’s not what you mean, I invite you to disambiguate.
L
Cumulative inflation between April 2000 and March 2008 is 23.8%.
So, if Michael Cullen wanted to keep current tax rates he’d need to adjust the 33% bracket from $38,000 to $47,000, and the 39% bracket from $60,000 to $74,000 on 1 October, 2008.
Cullen is not delivering any real gains to the workers the purports to defend. He’s merely returning some, not all, of the money he took away us via fiscal drag.
FYI,
NZIER has a substantial calculator up now on its main page, discussion here:
http://tvhe.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/new-zealand-budget-2008-tax-cut-calculator-2/
At least we now know it’s OK to borrow to fund tax cuts.
[debt levels are remaining constant, not increasing. The Government could have decreased debt further and not had tax cuts but it is already under it’s debt target of 20% of GDP. SP]
Steve – I take your word. Since you’re a fan of hypotheticals, what would you have said if it had been an English budget?
Nothing? Yeah, right!
Lew, Perigo said that?!
He really is as crazy as a loon isn’t he?