OPINION There are two ways of looking at a Budget to decide if it’s a winner or not. The first is to judge the Budget only politically. As in, will the Budget help the current government win votes? On that measure alone, the answer’s got to be yes – 83 per cent of households will get tax cuts , and who doesn’t want a tax cut? Sure, it’s become a little fashionable in inner-city suburbs for nice people to say to each other that they don’t want one because they’d much prefer the money was spent on school lunches or benefit increases or employing more doctors.
But ask them again from July 31 when the money hits their bank accounts and the answer may be less convincing because once it’s there, it’s hard to give back. These tax cuts are well overdue for the hard-working Kiwis who grew resentful under Labour about how much was done to help beneficiaries, while they got nothing. For just that signal alone, the Budget works well for National.
The tax cuts are well overdue full stop. We have gone 14 years without our tax brackets being adjusted. National’s Steven Joyce had them pencilled in but Labour won the 2017 election and stopped them.
There was nothing noble in Labour doing that. All they did was rake in more and more tax every year from hard-working Kiwis by stealth. It didn’t look like they were taking more because nothing changed.
But fiscal drag meant the average income went from below $48,000 to $76,000 – and because tax rates didn’t change, averag.
