AKA: tax, taxation
Key notes
- The y (vertical) axis starts at 24% and not 0%, and ends at 32%. This is a common representation for data like this where 1% shifts add or subtract billions of dollars. A scale from 0-100% hides these insights.
- The ‘tax’ issue can mean different things to different people, however, most of us would agree that we’d like to pay less tax or have our taxpayer money spent and invested better. As such, we’ve looked at total taxation for the economy.
- Remember that each Labour-led or National-led government has had coalition partners that share the successes, and the failures, with them. A full list of governments for this time range is at the bottom of this page.
Data sources
Data shown:
- Core Crown Tax Revenue as a % of GDP for June financial years (July-June) under the PBE standard which started in 2005. This ensures consistency in comparisons.
Full data:
Frequency:
- Bi-annual EFUs, except for an additional one in election year
Updated:
- BEFU = May
- HYEFU = December
- PREFU = ~September in election years
- Annual audited financial statements = October
Last update:
- Annual audited financial statements = 5 October 2023
Next update:
Why this KPI?
- IPSOS lists this issue as ‘Taxation’ and Curia as ‘Taxes’, but Essential measures the phrase ‘Ensuring a fair tax system’. As such, these words could mean different things, e.g.
- How much we pay in tax individually
- How much we pay in tax collectively
- How well that taxpayer money is invested/spent by the government
- Whether the tax system is fair
- Even within that last point, there are varying opinions on what ‘fair’ means, e.g.
- Some people believe it’s unfair that others can make capital gains on houses and not pay income tax on those earnings.
- Some people believe that paying up to 39% income tax on income over $180,000, and then 15% GST on what’s left (and other taxes too like fuel, vehicles, and alcohol) is unfairly high.
- Some believe that almost half of New Zealanders paying no ‘net income tax’ (income tax after benefits and tax credits) while the top 9% of earners over $100k pay half, is not fair.
- And then there’s the debate about %s versus $s, and realised versus unrealised earnings.
- Because fairness is a highly subjective and contested measure, we can’t use that as the KPI here.
- And, unfortunately, it’s currently very hard to empirically measure financially how well taxpayer money is invested/spent by the government, let alone capturing the non-financial benefits too, e.g. health, happiness, and safety.
- As such, that leaves us to measure how much we pay in tax as a society.
- The total tax taken by the government is referred to as Core Crown Tax Revenue. In other words, how much an economy is taxed.
- But this goes up as the population grows, and also as the economy does well, so we need to make an adjustment to measure Core Crown Tax Revenue as a % of GDP.
Related facts
Wishlist
With support, we’ll be able to add multiple KPIs for each issue:
- Updates on many of KPIs listed above.
- Core Crown tax revenue per capita inflation-adjusted
- Median and average tax paid per capita
- Public servants per capita
- Breakdown by tax type over time
Governments over the timeframe shown
- 1999 = Labour/Alliance + Green
2002 = Labour/Progressive + United
2005 = Labour/Progressive + United, NZ First
- 2008 = National + ACT, United, Māori
2011 = National + ACT, United, Māori
2014 = National + ACT, United, Māori
- 2017 = Labour/NZ First + Green
2020 = Labour + Green
Sources:1,2 (table 5).
Data published by The Treasury New Zealand
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