How to make tax fairer
21/07/23
"If I could vote for the tax switch Labour ruled out, I would. It would give about 99% of us a $20 a week tax cut. People who have $5 million of assets, as well as the family home, car and boat, would pay nothing. If you had $5,001,050 invested in the Michael Wood portfolio of airports, banks and telcos, you would be about 20 cents a week worse off. Tough, but if you scrimped and budgeted, grew your own veges, cut out smashed avocado cafe breakfasts, you could just get by."
In her Post column this week, Josie argues tit's astonishing how much money can be raised from a wealth tax.
Enough to fund tax cuts for the rest of us, because wealth in this country is so concentrated.
The hard truth for supporters of capital tax, like me, is that Labour have done enough polling to understand that voters are unlikely to vote for a new tax. So where to now?
Labour's tax switch has died in the service of its spending follies. Two projects, a vanity railway across central Auckland and a wild plan to flood Lake Onslow have a combined cost of $50 billion or a sixth of our GDP. No one wants a new tax to fund these bloopers. New Zealand Labour’s tax switch was killed because they made light rail and EV subsidies higher political priorities.
"UK Labour leader Keir Starmer says it's “a big mistake” for the left to equate spending money with radicalism he said this week. “We can’t commit to things without saying how we will pay for them.”
If we want people to accept fairer taxes, we probably need to be less ambitious and introduce them incrementally. The most important unfairness today is the price of land, which is locking over a third of us out of home ownership. So I would start by paying for a tax switch with a land tax that recovers some of the unearned capital gains.
In her Post column this week, Josie argues tit's astonishing how much money can be raised from a wealth tax.
Enough to fund tax cuts for the rest of us, because wealth in this country is so concentrated.
The hard truth for supporters of capital tax, like me, is that Labour have done enough polling to understand that voters are unlikely to vote for a new tax. So where to now?
Labour's tax switch has died in the service of its spending follies. Two projects, a vanity railway across central Auckland and a wild plan to flood Lake Onslow have a combined cost of $50 billion or a sixth of our GDP. No one wants a new tax to fund these bloopers. New Zealand Labour’s tax switch was killed because they made light rail and EV subsidies higher political priorities.
"UK Labour leader Keir Starmer says it's “a big mistake” for the left to equate spending money with radicalism he said this week. “We can’t commit to things without saying how we will pay for them.”
If we want people to accept fairer taxes, we probably need to be less ambitious and introduce them incrementally. The most important unfairness today is the price of land, which is locking over a third of us out of home ownership. So I would start by paying for a tax switch with a land tax that recovers some of the unearned capital gains.
