The NBR’s rich list is out again and New Zealand’s biggest bludgers are on display. There are 190 on the list this year with a combined wealth of $59.6 billion. The one thing this group has in common with each other is an allergy to tax.
Income tax:
What income tax do they pay? Buggar all.
The Inland Revenue department reported a few years back that half this group had an annual taxable income of less than $70,000 – the income which would put someone in the top tax bracket.
So while their wealth might increase by many millions each year, half of them said they earned less than $70,000! That would put their total income tax around $14,000.
Did this concern the government? When it was pointed out that many of the wealthy were using family trusts (tax rate 33c) to avoid paying the top tax rate (39c) the John Key government “closed the loophole” by reducing the top income tax rate to the family tax rate!!!
GST:
What GST do they pay? Buggar all.
It’s almost the same with GST. Those who pay the highest proportion of their income on GST are those on the lowest incomes. Here’s how it works:
Amount of GST paid as a percentage of total income, total expenditure, and disposable income
New Zealanders on the lowest incomes pay around 15% of their income in tax. The wealthiest 10% pay less than 5% of their income on GST.
So the only thing most of know about the Rich List is that most of up pay more tax than they do.
Income tax and GST together:
Putting it all together a minimum wage worker who works a 40hr week pays about 28% of their total income in tax – 14% in income tax and 14% on GST.
Prime Minister John Key on the other hand pays about 2.8% of his total income (his salary as PM and his $5 million in unearned wealth increase) on income tax and GST.
And some people wonder why we have increasing inequality in New Zealand.
It’s morally and ethically wrong for hard-earned income from wages and salaries to be heavily taxed while unearned income from shares and investments is tax free.
And before anyone writes a comment about how wonderful and philanthropic some of these rich listers are just remembers for them it’s a piddle in the bucket.
In fact I’m willing to bet that the average New Zealander give a higher proportion of their income to charitable causes than anyone on the rich list.
The whole system is rotten to the core.
So Keys assurances that the taxing of higher incomes avoiding their share of paying taxes, after the Panama Papers saga, was simply just pure lies from Key again for the 500th time wasn’t it?
This is just the slimy operator what we see always now of this corrupt hedge fund trader who belongs in the movie “The Big short”.
Get rid of bad rubbish before we are all bankrupted.
“The whole system is rotten to the core.” Dead right Mr Minto, and I seriously doubt sell out insider trader PM John key has only got a measly 60 million stashed away, you can bet it’s a hell of a lot more than that hiding in his offshore bank accounts and trusts.
Yep. The $50 million seems to have been purposefully chosen so that he can be shown as being rich without being too rich.
The more I read things like this the more I think that we shouldn’t be taxing earned income at all but capital and the unearned income that comes with that.
I dunno about not taxing income, but yes, NZ’s wealthy aren’t getting there on wages. We need to focus on unearned wealth. After all, that’s one of the root causes of our housing crisis
Excellent idea.
The government doesn’t tax unearned investment wealth?
Hell, they still rob my kids’ bank accounts at the end of every month just because they have had the good sense to save a bit of money and earn interest on it.
And yet the 1% can put it into trusts and avoid it.
My kids might save a hundred dollars in a good month and they are taxed for it.
The 1% avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax in a good month.
No fair at all.
If the average New Zealander understood what is being said Key would be pelted with eggs from Kiakohe to Bluff. Its just he is such a good debater he can mask and deflect reality unless one has specialist knowledge.
The thing is though, he’s not a good debater. Lange was a good debater. Key’s a smug arsehole with a talent for deflection, obfuscation, finger-pointing, name-calling, glib remarks and feigning mediocrity. “I’m just one of the lads having a laugh, mate! I like rugby, and BBQ’s and fondling young women without their permission! I’m like you, but richer and devoid of a social conscience! Vote for me!”
Anyone who has been at all paying attention over the past eight years should be able to see right through his manufactured facade and see him for the hollow, dead-eyed reptile he really is. It astounds me that so many still don’t.
Sound remarkably like a SOCIOPATH to me!!!
Our politicians and rich masters are criminals. Round them up and throw them in prison where they belong.
..and Hart made alot of his money at the taxpayers expense with the ETS scheme – no moral fibre – as described in the dvd “Hot Air – the NZ politics of climate change”.
These guys didn’t get wealthy by working for wages or paying their share of taxes. New Zealand has been gamed for years and we the taxpayers have funded it, “It’s the way the Game Works”, neo liberalism was just one big con job to hand up the cash cows in the Public Sector over to the Private Sector and a few people got very wealthy very quickly.
The NZ Public were conned, just like the Maoris were back in the 18th Century.
“And before anyone writes a comment about how wonderful and philanthropic some of these rich listers are just remembers for them it’s a piddle in the bucket.”
If a rich lister increases his wealth from $550m to $55m in a year then he cannot claim to be philanthropic. He may give some away but not to the point of actually being worse off to make someone else better off and to make things fairer. Philanthropy will never cure the growth of riches at the top end – what is given away as John says is a piddle in the bucket which we are supposed to be grateful for.
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