Having witnessed the Rt Hon Stephen Joyce present his first Government Budget, we consider that it was a predictable election year budget from a centralist Government in surplus, looking forward to an election. As one would expect, the announced tax and social changes are deferred until 1 April 2018, so the current Government needs to be re-elected.
The decision not to reduce personal tax rates but rather deliver a “fairer” result through a mix of threshold changes and then increases to social benefits (including accommodation supplement) are, in our view, more acceptable to the wider electorate, including those on higher tax rates. Generally speaking, Kiwis appear reasonably happy with the current tax rate settings, and we consider that the $2b spend in this space will be generally welcomed across the board.
Tax rate reductions in themselves are not targeted to where the need is greatest, given our progressive tax system, whereas social benefits have clearer “needs-based” criteria. However, the slight movement in thresholds sends a message of “fairness” to the entire personal tax base, recognising a degree of wages inflation for the newly-adjusted low and middle income tax thresholds.
Crowe Horwath is pleased to see that Government has refrained from further “tax tinkerings” such as increasing the Brightline Test to 5 years or ring-fencing losses to address the property market. These recent suggestions from the other side of the Treasury benches just don’t make sense, and meddling with a world renowned tax system for such matters creates more negative downstream consequences, including significant compliance costs.
Although there have been calls for business tax rates to be reduced (generally speaking, this means the company tax rate), this has not occurred. The macro reasons to consider doing it include that contextually, NZ has some of highest business taxes in the world – OECD average is closer to 20% than our 28%, so there have been concerns about competitiveness of NZ as a destination for capital. Further, the USA is likely to reduce corporate tax rates from 35% to closer to 20% (even as low as 15% but we think that is unlikely in reality). From a local perspective, the business community arguments for reducing corporate tax rates (and leaving personal rates higher), is that this drives retention of profits within companies – which may be reinvested in growth opportunities. If we assume reduced tax rates to OECD average, $100 profit minus say $20 tax leaves $80. If paid out, another $13 tax has to be paid (assuming a shareholder is on 33%). If retained, that can be deferred, and the company has more to invest in growth. However, there is no guarantee that extra funds in companies will be reinvested to drive sufficient economic growth to make up for the fiscal loss of doing it.
One reason for this concern is that NZ is a country of SMEs, so there are other ways of extracting cash from companies without triggering extra tax (albeit only delaying the inevitable). Further, NZ is a net importer of capital, so the biggest beneficiaries of this would be foreign investors, who are unlikely to pay anything more than the corporate tax rate (ie no top up to 33%) – creating significant fiscal leakage. In our view, there is a lack of firm data that proves that significantly more productive capital investment would flow into NZ as a result. Supply elasticity is not as great as some would portray. Accordingly, whilst corporate tax rates is a matter which we have to monitor within the wider international context, caution at this stage is a better outcome as the “world” re-balances itself following proposed US tax changes and OECD actions in the international tax space.
Capital gains tax was never going to be on the agenda – again we would agitate for a non-partisan exploration of this topic, plus superannuation. In the political system that we have, these topics are too “big” to be dealt with properly within party aligned structures.
The biggest area of debate out of the 2017 Budget is likely to be the balance struck between infrastructure spend ($4b), versus the effective redistribution of tax funds to individuals and families ($2b). Those with special interests in different aspects of the NZ economy will undoubtedly be dissatisfied with some of the new infrastructure allocations in terms of education, housing, health et al, but if you were to add up all of the demands released by special interest groups over the last 2 weeks, it would exceed the total amount practically available, assuming that managing Government debt is a sensible priority.
In summary, we consider this a pretty predicable and practical budget, given the circumstances, and give Minister Joyce a Pass mark. From a business perspective, the greatest upsides are likely to be indirect in terms of both benefitting from participating in the targeted infrastructure spend and hopefully seeing some business growth driven by increased discretionary income in low to middle income households.