Income Tax

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• Progressively reduce government spending by focusing on reducing the churning of middle class income through the tax system.
• Reduce the top income tax rates as spending reductions permit, with the eventual aim of achieving a top rate of income tax no higher than 20 percent.
• Require a 75 percent vote in parliament for new taxes, extensions to the existing tax base, or spending growth in excess of inflation and population growth. (more here)

• The Green Party supports income tax reductions to offset resource taxes, but will apply these to the bottom of the tax scale, not the top rate, so that everyone benefits.
•  Introduce and progressively increase a tax-free threshold up to $10,000 at the bottom of the income tax scale, simplify rates in the middle bands of the tax scale, and increase the top rates of income tax.
• Ensure beneficiaries receive the full advantages of any changes to income tax rates and adjust benefit abatement rates to address the problem of benefit abatement for those moving into employment. (more here)

•  Labour will introduce a new, progressive top tax rate of 36 percent on income over $150,000; that’s the top 2 percent of income earners.
• Raise trustee income tax to 36 per cent to avoid trusts being used as tax avoidance vehicles.
• Leave adequate fiscal headroom to allow for tax cuts, improved services, or faster debt repayment in Labour’s second term.
• Maintain and enhance public services that families rely on, particularly health and education, by reducing part of the tax cuts given to the wealthiest New Zealanders by the current government,
• Make sure the highest income New Zealanders and corporations pay their fair share of tax so we can afford to invest in health, education, and upgrading the economy. (more here)

• Reduce the tax paid by low income earners by not taxing the first $27,000 earned and reintroduce a progressive tax scale where high income earners pay a higher proportion of income tax.
• Collate all sources of income, including from shares, bonds, property, and investments, to be taxed at an individual’s personal tax rate.
• Reintroduce inheritance tax to be paid on a progressive scale for inheritances valued at over $500,000. This would exclude land held communally on behalf of iwi.
• Regulate family trusts and other tax avoidance devices to ensure no tax advantage applies to these or similar structures. (more here)

• Not available on their website yet.

• Begin to reduce income taxes from 1 April 2017, if economic and fiscal conditions allow.
• Any tax reduction will be modest, given the headroom available, and will focus on low and middle income earners. Our concern is that as wages are rising, people are being taxed more.  The average wage, for example, has gone up from around $47,000 when we came into government in 2008, to $55,000 now, and is expected to reach $62,000 by 2018.
• So we want to make sure the tax system continues to reward New Zealanders’ hard work and enterprise by modestly reducing income tax, if we can first achieve the three fiscal priorities above. (more here)

• To assist narrowing the widening incomes gap in New Zealand. A 2011 OECD report stated that the incomes gap in New Zealand was the worst for OECD countries over the previous 20 years.
• To tax only those activities which are appropriate for income taxation having regard to the wider social ramifications of the system.
• To replace the existing tax system with a fair and equitable system based on people's capacity to pay, so that people and businesses who benefit from the higher incomes made possible by New Zealand’s economic potential will bear a greater portion of the tax burden than those with lower incomes.  
• To replace the existing tax system with one which is clear and easily understandable, thus minimising confusion and costs.
• To ensure that the tax system is effective, raising only sufficient revenue to enable effective and efficient government programmes to be paid for without excessively burdening taxpayers and handicapping the economy. (more here)

• Support a broad-based low rate tax system.
• UnitedFuture believes the tax system should work in the interests of those raising families and it should empower family and community self-sufficiency rather than creating dependency.
• Under the present tax system people who have no dependents pay exactly the same amount of tax as people with dependents. Couples who are self-employed in farming or business and retired couples are already able to split their income for tax purposes but this is not available for those on PAYE incomes.
• Introduce Income Sharing for couples with dependent children, to reflect the fact that the family is generally the economic unit and not an individual earner in a family. Income Sharing means that, for tax purposes, the income of both parents is combined and then divided equally. Under our progressive taxation system this would result in a reduction in combined income tax paid where there is a significant difference in income between partners. It attributes equal value to the different roles each parent plays, whereas our current tax system does not recognise the contribution of parents who spend all or part of their time at home with children.
• Income Sharing will give couples with children the option of having a parent work fewer or more flexible hours, be at home raising their children, and able to retain more of their combined after-tax income. Since the government subsidises childcare for those returning to paid work, it should also acknowledge the contribution of those who have decided to forego their income, in whole or in part, to stay at home with their children. (more here)