Your views, August 25

Reaction to Election Blog [link at bottom of page]

[responding to Donna Wynd] Isn't Judith [Collins] correct about beneficiaries being provided more incentive go to work under National because they do in fact pay 19% instead of 33%? If they are on a benefit doesn't their part time work attract secondary tax at a flat rate of 33%? If so then she is quite correct and that is a rather large incentive and is far more appropriate than the current regime for these people.
- Mark

Donna Wynd responds: If an unemployed person has a part-time job, they pay tax of 20.7 cents in the dollar (including ACC levy). For every dollar they earn over $80, 70 cents of this is clawed back, so their effective marginal tax rate is 90.7 cents in the dollar. So they get to keep 9.3 cents of that dollar. It is not the 17 or 19 cents that is the problem - it is the 70 cents abatement on income over the very low threshold of $80.

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What planet is Laila Harre on? Does she not realise that spending the extra money she gets from tax cuts on music lessons and a new guitar for her son, house renovations, or a family holiday will do far more for the economy than the Labour Govt wasting it on hip hops tours, or incontinent ministers.
- astill

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In response to both Laila Harre and Alistair Kwun, please speak for yourself, do not pretend to represent us.

Firstly, any tax relief is greatly welcome in my household as I would rather save or spend the extra money the way I want rather then big sister telling me how to lead my life. Labour's so called bribes only benefit people with 2 children or more. What about the single people? Why do we get penalised for trying to better ourselves under Labour?

Secondly, Mr Kwun, not all Asians hate Mr. Peters, even though we do not agree with all his policies, he did have some valid points. If immigrants wish to live in New Zealand, then they must adapt to this country's culture and religion and not force their own culture or beliefs on to us. We can still keep and maintain our own cultures and beliefs while respecting others and we definitely do not want any extremism either.

Finally National's tax policy is fair and covers across board of taxpayers not just the selected few, unlike Labour's unfair targeting of who should benefit from their bribes.

- Ron Tan

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Murray [Jack], that is only how the direct income taxation system works. You forget the fact that that's only part of the tax system and also that many of the smaller taxes, esp the excise taxes on alcohol, petrol etc are regressive in nature. If you are going to talk about taxes and fairness, talk about the whole picture, do not just pick and choose one slice.

While I still do agree that taxes must be cut (reducing taxation to under 30 per cent of GDP would be a good start), cutting income taxes is the last place they need to be cut. NZers already work far longer hours on avg that most other OECD countries, therefore this extra incentive to work is not good for us when we already have less spare time to spend that money.

You like many other people still fail to look at some of the most important reasons for our economy's under-performance.

Our research spending as a percentage of GPD is extremely poor, still nothing to show from either major party there.

Also our productivity growth is atrocious. We constantly focus on working harder and incentives to work, when we already work hard, instead we should be looking at lifting our productivity rates and output per worker.

- Garrett King