Hard News: 2015: The Budget of what?
89 Responses
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Not directly related to the budget, but I have 2 questions. Are people on 5,10,15 hours work a week included in the employment figures? And do people who work 2 or more jobs have to pay secondary tax?
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
They can happily claim these moves were, in fact, their ideas, if implemented slightly differently.
If they’d done that- if they’d congratulated the govt on raising benefits, but insisted it wasn’t enough – ditto on CGT – I’d agree.
But no. Little and Robertson just moaned it ‘didn’t show a plan for economic growth’ and ‘didn’t help small business’ and ‘abandoned the regions.’
Guys. People who worship economic growth, small business people and ‘the regions’ mostly don’t vote for yas. You’re sposed to be the champions of wealth redistribution; the one’s who’ll stick up for the down-trodden, the low-waged, the unemployed.
But those words just seem to stick in your throats.
Labour - too scared to be left? -
For me personally, Budgets aren’t going to mean much until there’s some proper investment to fix the skills shortage/under-investment. In the long run it would probably reduce the need for people to go on the benefit.
In practice, it’d mean schemes like an ICT apprenticeship system, or funding or otherwise NZQA approval for the new DevAcademy.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
Yes and yes. But they are such general questions and of course there are more qualified explanations. The Stats and IRD websites are your friends wrt detail.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
If somebody works 2 or more jobs, the payroll people at the second job don't know how much they earn in the first, and thus can't tell which tax band to put them in.
So if you have two jobs on $16 an hour, you'll pay too much tax on the second one. But you *will* be able to claim it back at the end of the year.
Conversely, if you are earning $100k a year and help out in a pub at the weekend for $16 an hour, you will pay the correct amount of tax.
If there was no secondary tax in the current system, the first person would possibly pay the correct tax, and the second would underpay and have a bill at the end of the year. Which might be better, but it would mean that in a few cases, the IRD would wind up chasing their money.
I think there is a plan for a more sophisticated system where companies will report payroll to IRD in realtime and be issued adjustments. (There is also a privacy issue where you might not want one employer to know about your side job and how much they pay you).
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
I think there is a plan for a more sophisticated system where companies will report payroll to IRD in realtime and be issued adjustments. (There is also a privacy issue where you might not want one employer to know about your side job and how much they pay you) .
Winz ,who insisted my friend had a certain amount of work ,which, when the holiday season finished, also became sporadic, made her ring them weekly so they didn't give her undeserved money, which is taxed, so that is one way to determine income with adjustments.
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izogi, in reply to
I think there is a plan for a more sophisticated system where companies will report payroll to IRD in realtime and be issued adjustments. (There is also a privacy issue where you might not want one employer to know about your side job and how much they pay you).
This could also be good, but is it possible to do and still keep someone's income reasonably consistent for each paycheck if likely total income for the tax year isn't known in advance?
For example, for someone who's bad at budgeting, it could be confusing if a short spontaneous salaried employment term at the end of a tax year results in less cash-in-hand than when they did exactly the same thing at the start of tax year before hitting a higher tax bracket. Or is there some way to handle this?
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Robert Urquhart, in reply to
I think there is a plan for a more sophisticated system where companies will report payroll to IRD in realtime and be issued adjustments. (There is also a privacy issue where you might not want one employer to know about your side job and how much they pay you).
You can read more about this plan and give feedback / make submissions at https://vision.makingtaxsimpler.ird.govt.nz/
(My own primary comments are copied in my blog and I think the main thrust of them would address your concern about privacy issues – pity it’s unlikely to happen.)
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Sacha, in reply to
That's a forecast for a massive reduction in net immigration. Wonder what their basis is for such a forecast.
Maybe the flow of NZers coming back from overseas during the GFC are drying up? Or the flow outwards is picking up?
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Henry Barnard, in reply to
In answer to your first question:
Are people on 5,10,15 hours work a week included in the employment figures?
From Statistics NZ:
The ‘working-age population’ is the usually resident, non-institutionalised, civilian population of New Zealand aged 15 and over. We count people as employed if, in a week, they:
work for at least an hour for pay
work for at least an hour unpaid at a family business
don’t work because of sickness, holiday, etc, when they usually would have worked at least an hour. -
Rich of Observationz, in reply to
You didn't link your blog?
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Robert Urquhart, in reply to
You didn’t link your blog?
Dammit. Let's try that again, without trying to be clever with linked text.
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
Excellent interview of Helen Kelly by Kathryn Ryan on Radio NZ just before. Lots of ideas for progress.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201755433/union-boss’s-battle-for-workers-and-personal-battleKnew this was coming up but family stuff prevented us from listening live. Thank god for podcasts. Held off replying until got the chance to read Rebecca Macfie's article in the Listener....
Brain, heart and soul...all solidly and openly connected.
What a treasure we have.
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The worm has certainly turned but this budget did as little as possible to address the inter-generational theft that governments over the past 30 years have engineered - wittingly or not, the jury is still out. Inter-generational theft. I've been attacked by a few tories and elderly PAers over the years for mentioning the term. Now TVNZ is even running stories about inter-generational theft and how it is occurring. Here. in New Zealand. I'm going to wake up next week and John Key will be admitting he made a mistake bailing out finance company investors for billions of dollars and that the National Party have decided to implement a wealth tax - it is that mad this week. http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/young-people-victims-theft-over-home-ownership-6319099
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
The worm has certainly turned but this budget did as little as possible to address the inter-generational theft that governments over the past 30 years have engineered – wittingly or not, the jury is still out. Inter-generational theft.
Sadly it’s not unique to NZ, especially if you’ve seen Inequality For All and The Spirit of ’45. Housing, education, and employment, among other things, have gone from being public goods to perishable goods.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
the inter-generational theft that governments over the past 30 years have engineered – wittingly or not, the jury is still out. Inter-generational theft. I’ve been attacked by a few tories and elderly PAers over the years for mentioning the term.
Well good for you. Your activist record might turn out to be a handy get-out-of-jail card when the kids eventually get around to carrying out the long-overdue pogrom against intergenerational thieves.
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inter-generational theft that governments over the past 30 years have engineered
These excuses for human beings, yes of my generation, are too busy stealing from generations not yet born to care about much except their own miserable arses.
So there may be a queue to rip their throats out.
Ready to get in line? -
Sacha, in reply to
I suspect the kids will just leave, Pied Piper styles. Someone else can empty the bedpans.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
Now TVNZ is even running stories about inter-generational theft and how it is occurring.
Not sure if this is referenced, but Andrew Dean (Ruth, Roger and me) is a great spokesperson – articulate and really gets it. This is a nine minute clip, but well worth watching http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news/ruth-roger-me-andrew-dean-video-6319170
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
So there may be a queue to rip their throats out.
Ready to get in line?There's only one thing the inter-generational thieves fear more than death, and it's bankruptcy. For the simple fact that it's one of the few things that bring them back down to the level of those they wilfully stamp upon. And usually it takes something major like a total war or a Great Depression for it to happen, because they affect absolutely everyone.
So if any of us happen to reach a position of senior power, and also be in charge of a post-bubble burst bailout, the answer will be simple: "get back in the fucking queue like everyone else!" That's pretty much how the Icelanders handled their fiscal meltdown.
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
articulate and really gets it.
and yet eschews the idea of going into politics....where his talents are much needed.
We have three grown children, three student loans, five tertiary qualifications, one (fairly) secure job, one pathetically grateful for a 20 hour pw contract and one giving up on a post doc.(http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201755690/getting-funding-for-independent-science-research-is-getting-tougher)
Yet, the biggest concern is the dwindling prospect of having their own children.
And, being able to raise them themselves.
Daughter wanted to know why the government will fund for a childcare centre to raise your babies while mum goes out to work....when even a proportion of that funding would allow a mum(or dad) to do that work themselves.
I confess to feeling somewhat gratified that, despite the culture changing so dramatically within less than two generations, she would want to do what her mum did and not flick her kids off to strangers.
(Rider to that...I did work, but evening and night shifts so at least one parent was home with the children.)
How can we have gone from it being considered wrong for a mother to work(and oh! the criticism I got in the eighties!), to it being wrong for her not to, in such a short space of time?
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
How can we have gone from it being considered wrong for a mother to work(and oh! the criticism I got in the eighties!), to it being wrong for her not to, in such a short space of time?
I suspect they're both sides of the same coin that is the hoary old 'barefoot & pregnant' dogma.
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@Rosemary, as long as we're all busy telling women what they're doing wrong, something, something, anecdote, up hill both ways in the snow.
#$25, no one's getting $25 dollars, are they. That's like when they say some single mum with a kid who's at the doctor every second day is receiving $700+ in "benefits", but really aren't even getting their costs covered.
#inter-generational, it's the population bulge. There's a whole bunch of them, they grew up when the government had money to burn on making most of them wealthy, and they all vote. Then Harvard started training economists that socialism was morally wrong, people should pay for important broad social benefits by themselves, and so the rest of us are fucked.
It's not the boomers, or Gen X, or millennials, or even the politicians, it's just that the dominant economic theory in the western world (Labour, National, even the Greens) is an unscientific anti-communist bullshit piece of rhetoric from the cold war. Meanwhile, in China, the future is being built and we are aiming to miss out on it pretty well completely.
@Deepred,
In the long run it would probably reduce the need for people to go on the benefit.
See, in said dominant economic theory, inflation is a bad thing and so a fair proportion of people have to be on demeaning beggars benefits to drive down wages and maintain the value of the capitalist's investments in things which make no return, like, say, over-inflated housing prices in Auckland.
The trick is to blame the single mums, or the preferred dog-whistle for local racist notions, perhaps some boat people, or Muslims who happen to be sitting on oil, fund ever-bigger circuses, or maybe challenge a neighbour's dietary habits about how they all eat shellfish (of all things!).
Whatever you do, just keep 'em distracted while you hope your bullshit economic theory of the day eventually comes good despite all that evidence to the contrary. So, none of the expected surplus turned up for seven years running, let's try doing more of the same and see if that works. Is there perhaps some public good people aren't yet paying enough private profit for? Let's try housing this time! -
Sacha, in reply to
Scrabbling for cash, English talks about selling off some Chch cbd property (on the grounds that govt ownership is holding prices up - exactly as the Frame was designed to do).
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Sacha, in reply to
an unscientific anti-communist bullshit piece of rhetoric from the cold war.
Yes. Deeply scar(r)ed by communism, both Rand and Hayek tossed the baby out with the bathwater in the name of unrestrained personal 'freedom'.
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