Green Party pitches $20b wealth tax for free GP visits, ECE, and dental
Wednesday, 14 May 2025
The Green Party has produced an alternative budget that includes $88 billion tax in new taxes and rising Government debt, for free GP visits, dental care and early childhood education.
The “Green Budget” was launched by the party’s co-leaders at Parliament on Wednesday. It promises a “private jet tax”, free medicine prescriptions, an income guarantee of at least $395 a week, including agriculture in the emissions trading scheme, and the creation of a “Ministry of Green Works” to build infrastructure.
In a speech to party supporters, co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said greater taxation was needed “so that we can build and own things together” and the Government would next week deliver a “very bleak picture” and talk of “hard choices” in its Budget.
“Our prime minister is telling you that he would prefer to keep tens of thousands of kids in poverty than to fairly tax multimillionaires. He is telling you that he expects the lowest paid working women in this country to pay for his landlord and tobacco tax cuts.
“If we want to fix these things, we're going to have to be grown ups about it. That means serious common sense investment, not excuses.”
The wealth tax plan would have net assets, excluding debts, above $2 million or $4m for couples taxed at an annual rate of 2.5%.
A 1.5% tax would also be applied to net assets held in trusts, to curb evasion of the wealth tax, and there would be a 33% tax on gift and inheritances received over a person’s lifetime above a $1m threshold.
These new taxes would earn the Government, according to the plan, approximately $18b a year.
Tax thresholds would be hiked, with a 39% tax on income over $120,000, and 45% on income over $180,000. However, the first $10,000 of a person’s income would become tax free.
Companies tax would be raised to 33% and a $5000 per passenger fee for private jets entering New Zealand would earn $25m a year.
Other changes included the reversal of Government policies: removing interest deductibility for landlords and lifting the bright-line test for taxing property sales to 10 years.
Among cost savings proposed was saving up to $200m a year by “averting increase in prisoner numbers”.
In total the Green Party gather $88b more in taxes within four years. Nonetheless, to pay for increase spending, government debt would rise to 53.8% of GDP, instead of a forecast 46%.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis said the plan was a “circus of an idea” that would “kill all profit, all businesses in New Zealand”.
“That is almost a Soviet manifesto in terms of the confiscation of wealth, income and business that it promotes. And for Labour not to rule it out, to me, is a real sign of how far they have departed from economic common sense.”
ACT Party leader David Seymour labelled the plan an unaffordable fantasy.
NZ First leader Winston Peters said the plan was “Marxist” and held up a picture of the Soviet Union flag for the cameras.
Swarbrick said the plan would not be supported by “a very few, very rich” powerful people and the politicians “they have funded”.
By publishing a tax plan in its proposed budget, the Green Party has stepped ahead of Labour in a debate over taxation and Government debt.
The Coalition Government insists the country must reduce debt ‒ forecast to be $192.8b this year ‒ and return to surplus to reduce debt servicing costs, and insure the country for future natural disasters and economic shocks. But it promises no new tax measures to fund either paying down the debt or its new spending.
Instead, it intends grow the economy, re-prioritise or cut existing spending, and reducing future costs ‒ including by trimming the forecast payouts for pay equity claims with changes urgently made last week.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins, who said this week New Zealand was drowning in debt was a “myth” and promised Labour would produce a “fair tax system” policy soon, declined to comment on the substance of the Green Party plan.
Though, he said free GP visits, dental care, and early childhood education, were “very consistent with the Labour Party's view of the world”.
Swarbrick said the party would produce a fiscal plan in the coming weeks.
Four-year cost of Green Party budget policies
Free primary healthcare - $5.1b
Free nurse visits - $3.41b
Free dental - $6.8b
Free early childhood education - $5.3b
Working for families increase - $11.1b
School lunches expansion - $1.8b
Income guarantee for students - $13.3b
Income guarantee for those out of work - $8b
Restarting Jobs for Nature scheme - $1.5b
Ministry of Green works - $5.5b
Building 35,000 state homes - $19.2b
Renewable energy investment - $4.8b