John MacDonald: We are all part of the tax problem

Best of Business · Apr 27, 2023 · 5m

Another day and news of yet more surgery delays at Christchurch Hospital.

Maybe if the super-rich were paying their fair share of tax, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Because, in a nutshell, your typical rich-lister pays about half as much tax on every dollar of income they receive, compared to the rest of us.

That’s the main message the Government’s been pushing from the IRD’s report on the tax affairs of about 300 of the wealthiest families in New Zealand.

And, essentially, the main reason for that is we don’t have a capital gains tax in New Zealand.

Since the report came out, some people have…