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Unprecedented high in income tax paid by individuals in October eclipsed in November, with low unemployment seeing more kiwis forking out for the tax man

Public Policy / analysis
Unprecedented high in income tax paid by individuals in October eclipsed in November, with low unemployment seeing more kiwis forking out for the tax man
Monopoly income tax
Image: ccPixs.com. Licence: CC BY 2.0

A 16.1% jump in the year-on-year amount of income taxes paid by individuals was recorded in November 2021.

This eclipsed October's jump of 13.3% on the prior year, which interest.co.nz reported last month as unprecedented growth.

This latest spike, the largest in nearly 10 years, was published in the Crown Accounts for the period to November 2021, released by Treasury on 27 January 2022.

It points to continued low unemployment, which in September 2021 fell to its lowest level since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Bracket creep is also an increasing problem.

Statistics NZ will release the employment indicators for December 2021 on Wednesday.

As a proportion of total tax collected (excluding levies and fees), income tax remained steady at 48%.

This proportion peaked in the year to March 2021 at just over 49%, but the latest levels are at the high end of the data over the past decade.

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8 Comments

If you inflation adjust the income tax bands, as National wanted to last election, how much would they have move upwards?

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2

Probably quite a bit. Last year I saw a calculation that bracket creep was adding over $1B pa to Labours tax take.

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1

More money available for this government to waste on unproductive initiatives. 

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10

Time to cut income taxes you bunch of thieves 

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7

Gotta pay those motel bills somehow

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5

You referring to MIQ?

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0

Labour would be mad not to come up with a series of tax cuts and grab National's traditional pledge.

But of course they won't, their policy is to have as many people sucking on the tit of the government as possible. So we will just see all this money going on even more accommodation supplements, making both landlords and renters even more reliant on ever increasing money being drawn from productive sectors.

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1

Absolutely. Politically, a tax rebalance is a no-brainer. Are there any brains in the party though? Maybe they'll wake up during election year.

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0