The answer is that the title is in his/her name, as is the obligation.

But you know that, don’t you, big bruv?

Why should landlords pay rates for services on a property that he does not use? why should I subsidise state house tenants anymore than I already do?

I will always maintain that a poll tax is the fairest way.

“Terence is right, I do believe in a poll tax as apposed to rates, quite why those who own property have to subsidise those who do not is confusing.
We all use the services therefore we should ALL pay. ”

Umm, so tell me again why tenants pay rent?
Do you mean to say that rent isn’t used to pay rates? It would be a rather silly landlord who paid the rates out of their own pocket now wouldn’t it?

Lower the top rate? Nope… but smoothing out the progression and the benefit structure is necessary. The top effective marginal rate of someone who is trying to claw his/her way out of poverty, or someone who is finally making enough to qualify for a mortgage should not be higher than the rate on the guy who is trying to claw his way to the top of the “rich list”. It should sure as hell not be twice as high…. and that is what we see here in NZ.

It’s a simple iterative adjustment analysis. After 100K of income a rate of 50% and after 400K make it 60% and then go back to the benefits and business taxes and work out how to balance things. Then adjust and repeat until the system yields a monotonically increasing effective marginal rate but doesn’t collect any more in tax. The economic and mal-investment problems in NZ are sourced in our tax and benefits structure and the intransigence of the ministers in charge of money has a lot more to do with the money of their mates than with the health of the national economy.

respectfully
BJ

So, Stuey, can u fix it so that we can search the blog by commenters’ handles?

So much easier to find BJ’s bon-mots thusly. And think of the fun we could have correlating what David Farrar said on any given adjacent days… or Craig Ranapia, for that matter.

Who needs conspiracy theorists when you’ve got a good search engine, and unix-geeks to run it

And for the mysogynist deluded out there: I’m not misandrist, there ARE men I like (intellectually and otherwise), I just don’t appreciate abuse and ignorance dressed up as opinion or political comment.

Women who have stood in your shadows all their lives will rejoice to come out into the sunshine, and I will joy in their awakening whever I meet such women. I work for the day when I can truthfully say that half the world are effectively represented in the policies of the whole world; that is womenkind, who are silenced in so many countries, and would be silenced here if there hadn’t been strong women to stand up for the rights of all women.

Actually, it is an effective marginal tax rate of more than 90%. Here’s how it works. Let’s assume I’m on an unemployment benefit, with a partner, but (just to keep the calculations simple) no kids.

Net unemployment benefit abates at a rate of $0.70 for every $1.00 of gross earnings above $80.00. But the unemployment benefit is considered the primary income, so earnings from employment have tax deducted not at the lowest rate of 19.5%, but at the secondary tax rate of 21.0%. Add to this the ACC earner levy of 1.3%.

So that’s an effective marginal tax rate of 70.0+21.0+1.3 = 92.3%.

Given that the net rate of unemployment benefit before abatement for a couple is $289.84 per week, the 92.3% effective marginal tax rate operates from $80.00 per week gross earnings to $494.06 per week gross earnings, which is the level of income at which the unemployment benefit is fully abated.

So, if my partner and I between us earn $80.00 per week gross per week, we’ll have $369.84 in the hand each week. But if we get some extra work and earn $494.06 gross per week, we’ll have $383.88 in the hand per week. The additional $14.84 probably won’t even pay for the cost of getting to the extra work.

So next time you hear of a beneficiary avoiding work, or working “under the table�, this might give some idea why. If the system is unfair, and is perceived as unfair, those affected are likely to seek to avoid or evade it.

Working for families was revised partly behind the idea of changing the result a bit, remains to be seen how much of a change has been managed… my problem with the result is that while the hump can be less abrupt, there is a clear reduction as one gets firmly into the upper bracket… I may pay an effective 90% but someone on 120K pays an effective 39%. In Sweden they’d pay 56% and the emr on 60-80K would never be higher than that.

My point is that it can be fixed. Nobody in Labour or National has the slightest interest in fixing it.

respectfully
BJ

My understanding is 19% on personal income up to a first threshold, then 33% on every dollar after that up to the next threshold, then 39% above that. These are marginal tax rates.

I think that the system used to be the way you describe, some years ago. People did complain about getting less net income after moving up to a new tax bracket.