She said the current system was problematic in that many entitlements were claimed by wealthy people and paid for by hiking taxes on workers of all income levels.
“There are a lot of entitlements and support that have crept into the middle and upper class, and I would prefer to have a system where we don’t keep hiking tax rates in order to give people’s money back to them in the form of different entitlements,” Willis said.
She noted that her own family would have been eligible for thousands of dollars of Best Start payments, a $73 a week payment to all parents with children under 1 (the payment is means tested for families of children aged 1 to 3), which was introduced by Labour in 2018 (Willis’ children were born prior to the payment coming into force).
“Is that really necessary when there’s a two-income household?” Willis said.
She said some entitlements were “mission critical”.
These included “having a social safety net with welfare support available for people in times of unemployment, for people who are disabled, that is really, really important in our community”.
However, she said “continuing to add to the layer cake and entitlements at the expense of creating very high tax rates is not the path I want us going down”.
I’m in favour of almost all welfare payments being targeted at low to middle income households, rather than being universal. This includes NZ Super, winter energy payments, early childhood subsidies and the like. The only time a payment should be universal is when the cost of targeting it would be too high a proportion of the revenue saved.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.
2 comments:
Means testing Universal Super will introduce a myriad dodges for the artful. Tax recovers much of. If Labour retain and National not we will be doomed to governemt by Labour , in effect Te Pati.
Dr Eric Crampton, Chief Economist at the NZ Initiative think tank has advised us in this forum that 60 % of Taxpayers in NZ receive more by way of benefits and government services than they pay in tax.
I flew up to the States and back recently. On the way up I sat next to a family who had 2 children on non academic "scholarships" at American universities. I commented that their children must be very talented to have been head hunted from so far away. Oh no they replied , the iwi pays for it all.
The flight home came through Tahiti. I sat next to the manager of a group of 20 or more surfers that boarded the flight there . These kids must have worked hard to pay for 3 weeks up here I said. Oh no came the reply , the Church paid for it.
I wish the businesses I'm invested in could give my kids surfing holidays and non academic university scholarships.
If Ms Willis sees fit to income test various benefits she she might consider taxing all the ethnic, religion or other restricted member charity/ business units who receive discretionary tax treatment.
As Ms Willis says why should my taxes be raised to allow the discretionary tax treatment of these "charities " who then spend their untaxed earnings on non academic overseas scholarships and surf trips .
And just how many more WapareiraTrust outrages are there out there ?
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