National finance spokeswoman Nicola Willis with highlights of their tax plan announced today.
OPINION
It didn’t take long for the shine to come off National’s tax plan, did it?
For most people, National’s tax cuts are underwhelming, at best. When you cut through all the complexities, the package works out at an average of $14 a week per taxpayer. Paid for withsome stinging cuts that seem to hit disabled people the worst.
National hyped up expectations by talking about $250 a fortnight – but it turned out that was only for a very particular type of whānau: those on a combined household income of $120,000, with children.
Oh, and it would be paid for by taking away the 20 hours of free early childhood education extension Labour introduced in the Budget, and by taking away free public transport for kids.
Landlords also get special attention from National: $2.3b in tax cuts over four years. Where’s that money going to come from? By letting foreign buyers start buying up houses again, and taxing them for it. All of which would only pour more fuel on the next house price boom.
Letting foreign buyers start buying up houses again, and taxing them for it would only pour more fuel on the next house price boom.
For those less favoured – National’s tax package means as little as $2, and $25 at most, a week. The poorest million taxpayers would get nothing at all. National’s table of tax cuts didn’t even include incomes under $30,000. Guess that’s what was meant when Chris Luxon said last year we shouldn’t focus on “bottom feeders”.
But one group seems set to be particularly hard-hit if there’s a National Government. That’s disabled people.
One in four Kiwis have a disability - 160,000 disabled people receive a benefit and 90,000 have the total mobility card to reduce the price of public transport.
Most disabled people survive on less than $474 a week. Labour’s policies to remove the $5 prescription charge, reduce the price of public transport, and tie benefit increases to wages rather than inflation (so they go up faster) have been a big help for people with difficult lives. National’s plan of taking all that away just seems cruel.
National would bring back the $5 prescription tax on medicine, cut the rate that benefits increase by, and remove the public transport discount. All in exchange for a tax cut of as little as $2 a week for the typical disabled person.
Politics is about choices. And you have to wonder about any politician who would make a choice that says tax cuts for landlords are more important than helping Kiwis with disabilities.
How you start off wanting to create a plan to help people with the cost-of-living crisis and come up with a package that makes disabled people poorer, I don’t know.
National’s political calculus seems to be that they need to target money at the mortgage belt – that’s where the swing voters are. So, their tax cuts are biggest for those on higher incomes, with young kids. And if that means taking money off people with disabilities, well they’re probably not National voters anyway.
But I know Kiwis are a fair-minded lot, and I know most of us would turn down the offer of a few bucks a week in tax cuts if it comes at the price of making life harder for our friends and whānau with disabilities.
Ultimately, the last two years of National tinkering about with its tax policy – announcing it, withdrawing it, scaling it back, inventing new taxes to pay for it, all for the sake of an average tax cut of $14 a week – has just proven that tax cuts aren’t the route to wealth. They’re enormously expensive, which means some poor sod has to pay big time, and they make bugger all difference to most people’s incomes.
A decent plan would focus on delivering high-quality public services, like free dental care, and raise the money to pay for it by taxing wealth – like the Greens and Te Pāti Māori are proposing. A decent plan wouldn’t play off the middle class against the disabled.
Shane Te Pou (Ngāi Tūhoe) is a commentator, blogger and former Labour Party activist.
