Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer stands by $200b CGT, Nicola Willis calls it ‘Soviet’

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer quoted a figure some disputed. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer raised some fiscally attuned eyebrows in the House on Tuesday when she said the Government could raise an astonishing $200 billion from a Capital Gains Tax in just six years, 10 times more revenue than Labour’s ill-fated wealth tax.

It is an astronomical sum. On an annual basis, it is about half the size of New Zealand’s entire economy, measured by GDP. It would be more than a third of every dollar spent by the Government over the six years to 2023 (including the cost of the Covid response), which came to $570b, measured by core Crown spending. Core Crown Revenue is expected to be $136b in the current year.

The figure is vastly more than previous CGT policies. The 2018 Tax Working Group tax plan forecast raising just $11.8b in its first six years. Even the Greens’ 2023 wealth tax policy from 2023 would only raise about $12.8b a year, or $76.8b over six years.

Packer dropped the figure in Question Time asking Prime Minister Christopher Luxon how many houses the Government could build over six years with $200b she believed could be raised by the tax. Speaker Gerry Brownlee did not allow the question, because it did not relate to the primary question.

Estimated Revenue from the Tax Working Group's Capital Gains Tax. Chart / Tax Working Group

Outside Parliament, Packer stood by the figure, which came from a 1News debate between Act Leader David Seymour and journalist Bernard Hickey, who writes the The Kākā, a popular Substack.

Hickey pointed to the 2023 reports from IRD and Treasury on the effective tax rates paid by ordinary New Zealanders and the wealthiest households.

“The estimate is that the richest 40% of New Zealanders only pay an effective tax rate of 10% because of a lack of that capital gains tax,” Hickey said.

“We could have gotten $200b in extra tax revenues if only there had been a fair tax system which meant that capital gains were taxed at the same rate as every other type of income,” he said.

Hickey told the Herald that the figure had been a “broad estimate of the backward looking capital gains from 2017 at that point when there could have been a CGT to 2023″.

“If there had been a CGT and if those capital gains had happened, applying the top tax rates or 33% and 39% then you would have had that number,” he said.

He said if there had been a CGT, there probably would have been less capital gain because behaviour would have changed.

“To assume you would have that number of capital gains every year in a straight line is ambitious to unlikely,” he said.

Ngarewa-Packer said the figure included a few numbers.

“If we were to sit here and have a look at a few things. We’ve got that, we’ve got a capital gains tax and ... a capital gains tax from our perspective was not just looking at those who sell houses, but those who own more than one house”.

‘Even if our figures are off the mark, even just half of that is still something that would increase the Government coffers more than now,” she said.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis said the figure was “either the height of innumeracy or suggests a raid on the productive economy at a scale not seen since the darkest days of the Soviet Republic”.

“Either way it doesn’t bode well for Labour’s tax grab musings,” Willis said.

“This wrong-headedness once again shows the need for National’s efforts to bring basic maths back to New Zealand’s classrooms,” she said.

Infometrics chief executive Brad Olsen said the figure was “absolutely daft”.

He noted that the 2023 wealth tax developed by Labour was expected to collect $10.6b over three years - one tenth of the revenue Ngarewa-Packer thinks she can get from a CGT.

“So somehow this tax will collect 10 times more than the net wealth tax was expected to,” Olsen said.

He said that the tax required to generate such revenue would be so high it would have a chilling effect on business and the economy, which would probably mean very few if any capital gains to be taxed.

“It is heroic to suggest that you would see the level of capital gain year after year at such a a level that you would get these figures,” Olsen said.

“The market wouldn’t generate capital gain … it would be terrible more generally, unless the Government is going to employ everyone in the country that’s a whole lot of jobs at risk,” he said.

Thomas Coughlan is deputy political editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the Press Gallery since 2018.