New Zealand’s Aging Population: Tax System Reforms to Address Future Economic Challenges

• New Zealand faces challenges with an aging population affecting tax revenue and public service demands.
• Inland Revenue’s draft Long-Term Insights Briefing suggests a flexible tax system with stable tax bases and adjustable rates.
• The briefing is for consultation and aims to promote long-term public service focus, not government policy.
• New Zealand’s GST is broad and efficient, making it a candidate for rate increases to boost revenue.
• GST is considered regressive, impacting lower-income households more.
• The LTIB suggests increasing GST rates with compensatory measures for lower-income households.
• Inland Revenue modeled a 3% GST increase with tax credits for lower-income households, resulting in NZD 5.5 billion revenue.

Source: taxathand.com

Note that this post was (partially) written with the help of AI. It is always useful to review the original source material, and where needed to obtain (local) advice from a specialist.

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