Monday's Chorus: Flattering to deceive

Tax purists are outraged at the proposed GST changes, but Hipkins will be hoping that the carrot of cheaper fruit and vege plus some extra cash for families will be impressive enough at first glance to win over voters. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The Kākā

TL;DR: Labour has unveiled a tax policy that takes GST off a few food items and gives some extra cash to working families, but is less impressive on closer inspection, largely because it lacks a decent dollop of offsetting extra tax revenue from a wealth tax, that PM Chris Hipkins again ruled out yesterday.

Tax purists are outraged over the GST carve-outs, but they should reserve their outrage for the missing Capital Gains Tax that would have completed the perfect ‘suite’ of simple broad-based/low-rate/few-exceptions taxes originally built around GST, if only it had been introduced in 1989 as proposed.

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Without a wealth tax, the help for the poorest is miserly