“..Big personal tax cuts for middle and high-income earners are likely to be announced in the May Budget and take effect from October this year.
The tax cuts of up to $4 billion will be funded mainly by increasing GST from 12.5 per cent to 15 per cent, and cutting depreciation tax breaks on buildings.
Prime Minister John Key pledged to give across-the-board tax cuts in his statement to Parliament yesterday on his plans for the year.
There would be upfront increases in social welfare benefits, superannuation and working for family payments to compensate for the GST rise.
He acknowledged that higher income families would benefit more from the tax cuts, because they pay more in tax. Lower income earners would be no worse off – unless they owned rental property – and he expected them to be better off.
He said the Government would not increase GST “unless it saw the vast bulk of New Zealanders better off”.
“GST is a very difficult tax to avoid, no matter how people structure their financial affairs.
As David Lange once observed, even drug dealers pay GST.”
go to source/story>>Tax cuts: What’s coming to you – National – NZ Herald News
