A top-to-bottom review of the tax system is long overdue, Finance Minister Michael Cullen declared yesterday.
For evidence of that, he might have added, you need only look at what his own Government has done since coming to power.
Despite an exodus of people, it has raised the top personal tax rate for those who remain.
It says it needs the money.
Consequent anti-avoidance measures, affecting superannuation and fringe benefit tax, add to compliance costs.
And despite a dismal level of private sector research and development the Government has reneged on a promise to widen deductibility for R&D spending, baulking at the price tag of $120 million a year.
Driven by the need to preserve the revenue base, policies like these are not only perverse and counterproductive, they are ultimately futile.
The tax base is, if you like, an iceberg melting as it drifts into the waters of the global economy.
There is a danger of a race to the bottom as countries compete to cut their corporate and personal rates of tax.
To take the pressure off, there is a case for a big new tax, to allow rates for existing taxes to drop and avoid the need for petty and perverse defensive tinkering at the margins.
An energy tax is included in the tax review's terms of reference - no doubt as a nod in the direction of the Green Party.
A tax on energy has the advantage of intercepting the economy across a broad front, so that rates can be low, and being difficult to avoid because it relates to physical and measured quantities.
A rough calculation suggests that a tax of 1c a kilowatt hour on electricity, and its equivalent on liquid fuels and gas, would raise about $1.2 billion a year.
That would be enough to reduce the top rate of personal tax, and the company tax rate, to 30c in the dollar.
It would also be a step towards having energy prices which tell the environmental truth.
The tax inquiry's terms of reference are much wider than that, however.
How progressive should the tax system be?
Should financial transactions and capital gains be taxed as well as incomes and consumption?
And what would the ideal mix be?
Behind the question "How can the tax system encourage desirable conduct like work?" lie dauntingly difficult considerations relating to the interface with the welfare system, abatement rates and so on.
National Party tax spokeswoman Annabel Young predicts that such "airy-fairy high policy" terms of reference, combined with a modest budget, will doom the exercise from the beginning.
However, it may be better that the yet-to-be-named four wise men or women who make up the tax review panel are left free to focus their inquiries where they consider they will best be rewarded.
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