Summarised by Centrist
The Green Party has corrected a fiscal error in its flagship tax policy after $100 million a year set aside for
Inland Revenue administration was wrongly counted as revenue rather than treated as a cost.
The correction reduces the party’s projected net revenue by about $200 million a year, or roughly $800 million over four years.
The policy proposes a 2.5% annual wealth tax on net assets above $10 million, a 33% tax on inheritances and gifts over $1 million, a $10,000 tax-free income threshold and a new 45% top tax rate on income over $160,000.
Co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick described the mistake as a “typo”.
“We’ve made an error, and we’ve issued a correction to correct exactly that, but our figures still stack up,” she said.
Infometrics principal economist Brad Olsen, who reviewed the policy’s costings for the Greens, said the IRD administration cost had been recorded in the wrong place.
“When incorporating this administration cost, the figure was inadvertently included in the summary total of revenue when it should’ve been recorded as a cost,” Olsen said.
He said he was sorry to have missed the mistake, but maintained the error was not material to the tax policy’s overall revenue assumptions.
The correction marked the second problem with the launch, after the policy appeared early on the Greens’ website before its scheduled announcement.
National campaign chair Simeon Brown called the package “economic lunacy” and said the Greens had given Labour “a smorgasbord of new taxes”.
