Kate Stewart: Time to get fairer when taxing those working folk

Life is full of great mysteries, like how a solitary crumb in your bed can make it feel like you're sleeping on commercial grade sandpaper or how much was the doggy in the window and did anybody ever buy it? Why did the chicken cross the road and did it use a pedestrian crossing to do so?

We may never unravel these humungous head-scratchers but we're more than capable of solving the problem with our ludicrous tax rates.

I find it interesting that the Inland Revenue's tagline is "it's our job to be fair".
Since when is taxing a low-income earner 80cents in the dollar fair?

That's what part-time workers on a benefit are subject to.

I don't give a monkey's uncle how many jobs an individual has, be it one or twenty-one, until they are earning a full-time minimum/living wage they should pay only one tax rate.
This is exactly why the gap between rich and poor continues to grow.

Not that anyone should be subject to losing 80 cents in the dollar, but why only those with the least to begin with? Even our seven-figure salary earners, ie those that can afford to pay more, aren't expected to do so.

Where is the incentive for people to work part-time when the imposed tax rates are so draconian and crippling?

You may well be boosting your income, but let's keep it real, even working comes it with own extra expenses.

There's travel, to and from your place of employment, the cost of a work wardrobe, haircuts, makeup, student loan repayments and childcare costs, for working parents, to name a few.

It's hard enough to stay ahead of the game on a basic primary tax rate without being bled dry by bloodsucking bureaucrats, especially when they target those who are most disadvantaged.

Is it any wonder most small business fail when those who are self-employed are charged a minimum of 25% withholding tax? Far more than your average wage or salary earner and while you may get a refund at the end of the financial year it's a long time in coming and does little to help in the week to week struggle of just making ends meet. Tax rates should only be based on how much you earn not how many jobs you have and/or if you work for yourself.

Everyone's basic living costs are the same regardless of your employment status and so it only seems right and, dare I say, logical that everybody earning the same amount pays the same amount.

There's absolutely nothing fair about two individuals, bringing home identical pay packets, where one pays more tax than the other ... there's simply no justification for it.
Can we really be surprised that people aren't too keen to work for twenty cents in the dollar? Would you?

With poverty levels at an all-time high and even those earning 100K are now bemoaning their lot, it's time for the government to take an urgent look at the way we tax people and the creation of definitive earning thresholds for no more than three basic primary tax rates.

Secondary tax shouldn't even apply until you earn 40K, if at all.

We need less focus on tax cuts and more on tax rates. If the rates were fair, to begin with, maybe governments wouldn't need to buy our votes with the promise of tax cuts that more often than not exclude those who need them the most.

If it is Inland's Revenue job to be fair then it's high time they started doing it. #commoncents

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