Winston Peters accused the Conservative Party of plagiarising New Zealand First’s policies.
Common policies isn’t plagiarism but copying a slogan could be and that’s what NZ First has done by adopting it’s common sense as its rallying cry for the election.
Since 2002 when Peter Dunne got the television worm to dance by insisting his policies were common sense, that’s been associated with him and United Future.
Common sense is an appealing slogan but New Zealand First backs it up with policies which have a greater claim to common than sense.
One of these is removing GST from basic food items.
The thought of wiping $15 off every $100 spent on groceries is attractive but it’s not that simple.
Not all of the grocery bill is spent on food and the part that is isn’t all spent on basic items – whatever they are and that’s where the problems, and costs arise.
Exactly what is basic and what isn’t requires definition, that’s open to debate and it all adds complexity and cost to our enviably simple and relatively cheap to administer GST system.
Labour tried to sell removing GST from fresh fruit and vegetables at the last election but gained little if any traction. One of the reasons for that was that the biggest gains from that would go to the wealthy who’d save on luxury items.
But the bigger problem with this policy is the cost.
. . . Mr Peters said his policy would save New Zealanders but cost the Crown a whopping $3 billion a year or thereabouts.
“This bold policy aims at the heart of the inequality undermining our society.”
Also “as part of a fair system” NZ First would remove GST from rates on residential property.
“This tax-on-a-tax deceit has to end, and it will,” Mr Peters told around 150 party faithful at Alexandra Park.
He did not provide details on how much that policy would cost, but with local authorities raising more than $7 billion a year in rates, the Crown would lose hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
However, in an echo of Labour’s plan to fund its big-ticket items, Mr Peters said the policies would be funded through “a clampdown on tax evasion and the black economy” which he estimated was worth $7 billion a year. . . .
Inland Revenue already devotes a lot of time and money to detecting and clawing back money lost through evasion and the black economy.
Greater effort would result in greater costs and would be very unlikely to result in a fraction of the billions of dollars that would be lost from the tax take if these policies were adopted.