300,000 visits to Government’s tax cut calculator

Friday, 31 May 2024

The Government’s tax calculator has been accessed more than 300,000 times by people seeing how much their tax cuts will be.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis told ANZ officials at a post-Budget event in Wellington earlier today that the calculator had been viewed more than 240,000 times, but it’s understood since then Government has received revised numbers.

Willis spoke of the demand after her boss, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, described the Budget as a 'diamond made under pressure' at a National breakfast this morning, a day after the Government announced the tax cuts at the Budget yesterday.

Willis told the room at ANZ, in a speech, that by contrast, after last year’s Labour Budget, the Budget website had been visited just 17,500 times.

“I share those numbers because they accord with the feedback from every day New Zealanders that I have been getting,” she said.

She also addressed an email that went out from Labour to supporters on Friday, asking people to donate their tax cuts to the party, calling it “cheeky and hypocritical”. “I think it's utterly consistent with Labour's view that they can always spend their money better than you can.”

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said today the email addressed the fact some people didn’t want or need a tax cut. “A lot of people …that I've spoken to who are in a position where they don't want a tax cut right now and they don't feel they need a tax cut right now [and] wants to see that money wants to do a bit of use. The Labour Party is doing fundraising because we actually think that the Budget’s got the wrong priorities.”

Willis and Luxon have been on the Budget publicity circuit, with Luxon at a National event at Eden Park early this morning - attended by Auckland mayor Wayne Brown and his deputy Desley Simpson - followed by an early education centre visit shortly after championing the Government’s education sector boost.

Luxon was speaking following the release of the Government's 2024 Budget yesterday - Finance Minister Nicola Willis and the Government's first - the marquee item being its tax cuts. Most people will receive some tax cuts on July 31, but couples with children look set to benefit the most.

Luxon suggested the “green shoots” of economic recovery, by way of lower interest rates and reduced inflation, will be seen by the end of the year.

“Yesterday what you saw, I think, was a responsible Budget. It was a careful Budget, it was a Budget for what I call the squeezed middle and it's certainly a Budget for the difficult and challenging times that we face today,' Luxon told the crowd, including Brown, Auckland deputy mayor Desley Simpson, and ministers Simeon Brown, Erica Stanford and Tama Potaka.

Luxon said the Budget was the “tightest..by any reasonable measure that we’ve seen for five years” but had included extra money for health, education and frontline policing, thanks to the Government’s savings drive in the public service.

“This Budget is in fact a diamond made under pressure, because it’s the product of a systematic commitment to actually driving better value…I think given the conditions we face it’s nothing short of remarkable.”

While interest rates remained in “stratospheric highs…I have to tell you, it will pass, and this Budget shows us that inflation will fall back to 3% by the end of the year. It shows us that interest rates are beginning to fall after that, and it shows an end to the recession in sight and the green shoots of a recovery taking hold.”

But about 200 families 'potentially could be a little bit worse off' as a result of the Budget, Luxon told reporters on Friday.

That was based on the numbers he had seen, and was 'not significant in the scheme of things''.

Luxon was asked about a joint Treasury and IRD assessment that warned 9000 households - 0.5% of all households - would be worse off by an average of $1 per week. That was due to an unintended interaction with the personal income tax threshold adjustments and the way part-year benefit payments are calculated.

'Just remember, this has been designed for low and middle-income working New Zealanders, working New Zealanders,' Luxon said.

'We've said to those people that are waking up, going to work, getting the kids to daycare, trying to manage the two jobs in a household, actually get from paycheck to paycheck, get the grocery shop done, this is about giving them relief.'

Willis has also addressed criticism that the Government had gone back on its word to fund 13 new cancer drugs, at an estimated cost of $280 million over four years.

Willis told AM on Friday that Government had to 'find $1.8 billion to rescue the funding of medicines that were left unfunded by the outgoing government'.

Pharmac had been given 'cliff funding'. 'It had been short-funded so that as of June 1, this year it would have run out of the money for listed medicines.

'So our first job was to rescue those medicines. And in future Budgets we want to deliver on that commitment for more cancer drugs,' Willis said.

It was put to Willis that people would die because the Government had not funded the drugs.

'It is really tough. I regret that we haven't been able to do it in this Budget. I would have really, really wanted to, and it's a commitment that we hold dear, that we want to deliver on,' Willis said.

'The situation we're in is if we hadn't found that $1.8 billion for essential medicines, then there would have been New Zealanders who rely on medicines, things like asthma inhalers, things like diabetes medication, who would have found those medicines de-listed next month.'

Additional reporting: Stuff reporters.