ezbee:

 

Much of Europe has very high marginal tax rates, and CGT, inheritance taxes etc too as new mechanisms to avoid tax evolve.

 

...and many places with those taxes also have deductions, offsets or rollover relief that often mitigate or totally nullify the effects of those things on ordinary people. In NZ, the proposals we see don't really take those into account, so the proposed taxes here tend to be levied far more widely, with relatively little on offer in terms of a reduction in personal tax rates to compensate for it.

I would be more charitable to a redesign of the tax system but there's too much oxygen given to the "other places have higher rate" or "other places have this tax so we should too" approach which is beyond superficial and I don't have confidence in anyone to have that debate in good faith to the extent I'd base a tax system redesign off their work. The TWG CGT report chaired by Cullen is a classic example of this in action. 

There's also the far more concerned aspect of how massively government revenues have grown over the last five years, yet almost every single social service is in crisis mode and it's becoming harder and harder for NZers to access basics that other countries seem to be able to provide without freezing their tax rates for decades at a time. There's a real question to ask as to whether we should be paying more tax at all, and at what point 'more' would be enough, given the state we find ourselves in now.