Cyclone Gabrielle: Government opens door to reassessing new taxes for cyclone at Budget in May
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Loading... - Martin Lucy
- 22 Feb 2023
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The Government is open to raising taxes at the Budget in May to cover the cost of the Cyclone Gabrielle clean-up, potentially reversing a position taken earlier this month to stick to former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s revenue policy.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Finance Minister Grant Robertson have both said they will look at both expenditure and revenue options at the Budget, likely to be delivered in May, which is being rewritten in light of the impact of the cyclone.
When asked about a one-off “cyclone levy” of the kind used following the Queensland Floods, Hipkins told RNZ’s Morning Report, “the issue of how we pay for all of this in the medium term will certainly be front of mind in the budget. It is certainly not something we will make immediate decisions on”.
When directly asked whether it could be ruled in or out, Hipkins said “at this point I am not ruling things in or out”.
This is a change from how Hipkins answered question about changing tax settings soon after he became prime minister.
In January, when asked about tax changes, he said he would be honouring the Labour 2020 election manifesto, which promised to make no tax changes beyond those Labour campaigned on like introducing a new top tax bracket.
“We’ll honour the commitments we made around tax at the last election; I absolutely stand by those commitments,” Hipkins said in January, adding that any tax changes would be part of Labour’s 2023 manifesto that has yet to be written.
“In terms of our tax policy for the next election, New Zealanders will know it well in advance of the election. I’m not going to announce a tax policy on day one,” Hipkins said. Read More…
