Joke is, Labour Spent Every last Cent and Then some and Left the Nat’s with this Huge Problem of NO MONEY in Kitty that Labour Created when they had that Massive Spend up in the Lead up to Election Day, Because they knew They were on the Outer after 9 Years of ripping the Country Off, Big time.

So, Question is, WHAT did the Labour Party and Their Cohorts do with ALL That Money, Huh. ?

No Wonder the National Party is struggling to get the Country back up on it’s feet again after the labour Party Absconded with 700 Millions dollars that They said they had in the Kitty in the Lead up to the Elections,

Yep, Labour Party was / is, Full of Bull.

How about in your birthday month
Imagine paying $20,000 in a month, now that would get your attention!

I am convinced the only reason we do not have massive tax cuts and massive spending cuts is because the average chap in the street does not ‘physically’ pay taxes; his automatic PAYE deductions do not seem ‘real’.

If he was given his entire salary without deductions and then told he would have to pay taxes personally, as businessmen do, and the average chap came face to face with taxes and tax rates and thoughts of what he could do with the money if taxes were lower, and thoughts of how much of his money is being wasted, and further thoughts of what he could do with the money himself rather than the State wasting it on welfare for the Maoris….

….then you would see the elimination of “we need a safety net”/”the government should do this”/”I do not mind paying my share” comments from the lexicon.

Instead of a welfare state and civil servant salaries and vast numbers of tax inspectors and government departments I strongly suspect the average chap in the street would be taking part in an armed rebellion to insist upon tax cuts/elimination… (together with hanging a few traitors, solo mothers, “long term unemployed”, former tax inspectors, Iwi Trust Board members and others who feel ‘entitled’ to the hard earned money of the average chap in the street).

For those students of history wondering about my ‘armed rebellion’ comments you may like to think “Yorktown, Virginia – mid October 1781″ as an example of what happens to those who seek to tax and tax and tax the ordinary chap in the street in a real and meaningful way for no better reason than they feel entitled to his money….and as an example of the average chap saying to those wouldbe taxers “up yours, Charlie”

http://www.nightcitytrader.blogspot.com

Correction

“Labour will wail if the top tax rate is dropped that THEY THINK this is giving tax cuts to millionaires,”

Gareth Morgan summed it up pretty well a few weeks back, the millionaires often do not pay the top marginal income tax as they utilize the loopholes to get around it, whether it be PIES, companies, or family trusts. The reality is, it is the middle to upper income people that pay this, not the top earners.

“What you all forget is that the tax rate only applies to that ABOVE the tax threshold. So the difference to a ‘teacher ‘ on $70,000 is only small.”

You are right that a teacher earning just over 70k is only going to be taxed at 39% on a very small part of his income. Of course that also means that the government is only going to see a very small gain in revenue. But that marginal rate is going to make a *huge* difference to the economic decisions made by that tax-payer.

If he wants to make more money, every new dollar he earns in NZ is going to be taxed at 39%, which means every new dollar he could in a country with a lower marginal rate is worth more, or alternatively if we want him to work more we have to pay him a lot more to make it worth his while.

The problem is not that it’s unfair to take so much money from the most productive members of society, though of course it is unfair. The bigger problem is that high marginal rates bring in relatively little revenue while causing huge dead-weight losses (i.e. people deciding to not work as much, or worse, deciding to work somewhere else).

But also a tax credit?

Providing “safety nets” is not an essential government service. You insure your car and your house don’t you? What’s wrong with insuring your health and your income/ employment.

The folly of the shifting of responsibility from the individual to government is the core reason this country is becoming a stinking stagnating clapped out socialist sewer.

A little bit draconian there Red. You have to have some safety net, but a flatter tax system and a hand-up not a hand-out mentality would be a whole lot better at incentivising the populace than the current middle class welfare money-go-round we have at the moment.

Of course you don’t, and likewise there is no reason to apportion tax according to how much anyone earns either.

Tax should be a flat amount, paid by cheque once a year.

The increase in production created by such a move would immediately improve the living standards of every NZer by around 50%.

Tax credit? No, it’s just another euphemism for a welfare benefit targeting a sector of the population; and the same WFF our fearless leader, the empty-suit Key, labelled as “comunism by stealth” during the 2008 election campaign.

Thanks to populist and spineless goverments NZ is destined to be saddled with these welfare anomalies, which after a while become an entitlement and can never be removed or taken away for fear of an electoral backlash.

Clark, Cullen, Key, and English are all politicians cut from the same socialist cloth.