PSA supports progressive thinking on capital gains tax

The Public Service Association (PSA) has stated its support for the campaign launched yesterday by Tax Justice Aotearoa New Zealand for capital gains taxation to be included in the Government’s move to undertake serious tax reform.

“If the Government is serious about implementing a major set of long overdue tax reforms then a capital gains tax can’t be left out of those,” say PSA national secretaries Glenn Barclay and Kerry Davies.

“When the final report from the Tax Working Group (TWG) was released in February we commended the group’s finding that the inconsistent treatment of capital gains only serves to perpetuate the unfairness of the tax system, leaving us with a society where wealth is increasingly concentrated in a smaller percentage of the population.

“Introducing a capital gains tax is an important mechanism for broadening our nation’s future tax base and to ensure that our public finances have been designed well enough to sustain and grow decent public services.

Glenn Barclay: “As a union that advocates for stronger public and community services as one of our strategic goals, the PSA has had a longstanding involvement in promoting public debate and progressive thinking about issues such as tax.

“In 2017 we published our booklet Ten Perspectives On Tax and on 28 March this year we organised a seminar where TWG member and CTU economist Bill Rosenberg talked with independent author Max Rashbrooke about the TWG’s Future of Tax report”.

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