Tomorrow's budget will be a predictable one with "a few twists" and long-term goals in mind, Finance Minister Bill English told reporters as he made a traditional visit to the printer of the annual document in Lower Hutt today.At the Printlink p
Tomorrow's budget will be a predictable one with "a few twists" and long-term goals in mind, Finance Minister Bill English told reporters as he made a traditional visit to the printer of the annual document in Lower Hutt today.
At the Printlink plant in Petone, Mr English generally responded to reporters' questions with "you'll just have to wait until tomorrow" but said while tax changes would have an immediate impact on New Zealanders, the main intention was to establish the desired long-term effect of changing the way people spent.
New Zealanders tended to spend more than they earned and that needed to be turned around. "We need to alter the incentives in this economy so there are stronger incentives to save and invest and create jobs, and not such strong incentives for property speculation and excess borrowing," Mr English said.
"The tax changes will improve the incentives to get ahead, to work, to invest, to save, to create new jobs, and in particular it will provide better incentives for skilled New Zealanders to stay in NZ."
Mr English reiterated an intention to steer people away from an historic tendency to heavily invest in property and said while high earners would get more money in the pocket from intended tax changes, "by and large higher income New Zealanders will be paying higher effective tax rates on property."
He talked about restricting government spending and said the bulk of the money in the budget would go to the health and education sectors.
A website -- www.taxguide.govt.nz -- goes live tomorrow afternoon to provide users with a simple tax calculator so they can work out how changes affect them.
