250,000 Kiwis now pay 39-cent tax rate

Thursday 2 Dec 2004

Rodney Hide - Press Releases - Other

ACT Leader Rodney Hide today asked the Finance Minister to drop his dopey 39-cent tax rate and give a Christmas bonus to the 250,000 full-time workers now forced to pay it.

In a question from Mr Hide, Dr Cullen revealed that Treasury estimates that 22% of full-time workers will pay the 39-cent tax in the 2004/05 financial year. This is up from 15%, or 150,000 people, in the 1999/2000 financial year.

"When Labour hiked up the top tax in 1999 it promised it would affect only 5% of all taxpayers. But Treasury now estimates that a staggering 250,000 people pay this unnecessary and confiscatory tax rate.

"The time is now right for Labour to ditch this envy tax on success. It would be a significant Christmas bonus from a man who is increasingly looking like Scrooge. But Dr Cullen would rather swim awash in taxpayer cash than give any hard-working New Zealander a Christmas bonus," said Mr Hide.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>