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National Party leader Judith Collins denies it is an election bribe, but Labor describes the promise of tax cuts as “reckless” and “totally irresponsible.”
“You clearly need to keep more money,” Collins said Friday.
National promises tax cuts 29 days before Election Day.
It would mean $ 36 to $ 46 more a week for middle-income people, and it would take effect in time for Christmas, lasting 16 months.
If you make between $ 60k and $ 80k a year, you will get between $ 2,500 and $ 3,500. Low-income people get much less: $ 560 to $ 900 if you’re on $ 50k.
The city’s biggest winger earning more than $ 90,000 is pocketing $ 4,000, including Collins on his $ 240,000 salary.
“I’ll probably buy something,” he said.
“Times are tough. I have four children,” said his finance spokesman Paul Goldsmith.
Collins joked, “They’ll spend it for him.”
Labor was quick to brainstorm and coordinate their fiscal attack lines.
Union leader Jacinda Ardern described the proposed tax cuts as “totally irresponsible,” an analysis her finance spokesperson Grant Robertson agreed with.
“These are not the actions of a responsible party,” Robertson said. “It has clearly been done in a desperate way.”
Ardern added: “This is simply not the time.”
The cuts cost $ 4.7 billion paid out of the government’s COVID-19 fund ‘just in case’, and Ardern isn’t happy about that.
“They are raiding that for tax cuts and that is simply not correct and it is not the actions of a responsible party, much less a responsible economic manager,” he said.
National would spend $ 6 billion less than Labor on general operating costs, such as education, health and social services.
It would eliminate tertiary education and KiwiBuild without fees (love is not lost there) and contributions to the Super Fund would also be suspended.
“It’s raw and extreme,” said New Zealand First leader Winston Peters.
National’s tax cuts work like this: Income is taxed gradually in parentheses, so you pay more the more you earn. National’s proposal raises all income tax thresholds, so you pay less tax on more of your salary and less to the tax collector means more to you.
Tax bands would return to normal in March 2022.
“We cannot go in and out of tax cuts like we have with alert levels,” said ACT leader David Seymour. “You are not canceling the children’s swimming lessons because the tax cuts ended.”
ACT wants the cuts to be permanent, and they could.
“Obviously, we would love to be able to keep it permanently, but we can’t promise that right now, given the state of the books,” Goldsmith said.
Collins said, “I would tell all the teachers, police officers and nurses, that no one will support them like we do.”
Nothing says backing you up like hard cash.
Analysis by political editor Tova O’Brien
We are definitely in the election game! It is one of the main flagship policies that totally differentiates National from Labor.
To date, we have seen a lot of good policies from the two main parties, but it has all been quite interchangeable: real centrist things that could have been announced by the National or Labor Party.
This establishes a clear demarcation. It’s also a major U-turn for National after Collins scrapped tax cuts last month.
She says that the second confinement changed everything; an impending election day probably also contributed.
