Mike's Minute: This Government is simply dishonest about tax

Once again, I find myself a bit confounded by a government that seems, at heart, basically dishonest. Can they argue the GST treatment on KiwiSaver fees is not a new tax, given they said there would be no new taxes? Yes they can, because GST is not a new tax. But are you paying more tax because of the Government's move on KiwiSaver fees? Yes you are. So has the tax take gone up because you are paying more tax? Yes it has. And so we dance, I guess, on the head of a pin. We all know what this is - it's just a matter of whether we can be bothered, yet again, with dealing with a bunch of reprobates who say one thing and do another. Excise tax on petrol isn't a new tax - we have been here before. Brightline taxes on lengths of time on investment properties - no they are not new taxes, just more egregious versions of the established methods of fleecing us. Maybe, come the election next year we should not ask about new taxes but ask whether whatever they say around things like tax bears any semblance of truth, or whether we should take basically everything they say with a grain of salt because they have B.S down to a fine art. That’s before we get to the fact that it will be inflationary, given the tax and cost will be passed on and therefore we pay more, and of course, save less. The saving less is the stupidest part because KiwiSaver was of course supposed to be this country's ticket out of the absurd reliance we have on the pension and its increasingly crippling effect on the tax base. I am of the mind that the Government has worked out it has lost next year and is increasingly fatalistic about its options, therefore goes for broke. They are of course actually broke which is why we have the tax move. The numbers they will haul in are astonishing. And the amount you will lose for your retirement is pretty bad as well. So the policy mix now is made up of stuff like Three Waters and co-governance, which wasn’t mentioned as part of the election campaign last time, and stuff that sort of was but we can get around it anyway Such a classy Government with so much honesty, so much transparency, so much openness. If you are one of the 50 percent who voted for this, surely you’ve worked out how bad the con was.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.