{"id":10409,"date":"2025-09-08T22:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T22:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/10409\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T22:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T22:00:10","slug":"nz-first-kiwisaver-policy-could-cost-government-12b-28b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/10409\/","title":{"rendered":"NZ First KiwiSaver policy could cost Government $12b-$28b"},"content":{"rendered":"
Peters did not have costings for the policy when asked at the weekend. <\/p>\n
Asked about the numbers on Monday, Peters said he had \u201cseen that speculation already\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cHow can they work that out, when they don\u2019t know the numbers in or out at this point of time is beyond me,\u201d Peters said. <\/p>\n
\u201cLook at the cost of us not doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
NZ First leader Winston Peters during his speech to members and supporters in the Palmerston North Convention Centre, 07 September, 2025. NZ Herald photograph by Mark Mitchell
<\/p>\n
Using data from the Financial Markets Authority\u2019s KiwiSaver annual report and IRD tax data, it is possible to calculate that the cost to the Crown would be about $12.3b to $28.3b, depending on the settings.<\/p>\n
KiwiSaver 2024 contributions were about 5.9% of all wages reported to the IRD. Mapped onto the economy in 2026, as forecast by Treasury, would see $11.9b contributed to KiwiSaver funds.<\/p>\n
Increased to a contribution of 8% for the employee and 4% for the employer, this would result in about $12.3b in additional contributions.<\/p>\n
If NZ First made good on its promise to offset these contributions in tax cuts, this would require a tax reduction of $12.3b annually – a package of tax cuts about three times as large as the current Government delivered in 2024.<\/p>\n
If the policy were to increase to a compulsory 10% employee and employer contribution, balanced by a tax cut, this would result in a reduction in revenue of $28.3b \u2014 about the same amount spent on the health system annually. <\/p>\n
There would be other impacts – some positive, some negative. Some employers would likely reduce headcount or move staff from being employees to contractors to avoid paying the additional KiwiSaver contributions. <\/p>\n
However, tax paid by KiwiSaver providers through PIE returns would increase. <\/p>\n
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon would not be drawn into a debate on the numbers on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach party is going to have a superannuation policy as it goes into the election campaign, that is the time for us to have a look at it,\u201d Luxon said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Peters did not have costings for the policy when asked at the weekend. Asked about the numbers on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12894,12891,12895,8613,6965,4187,124,10666,1888,4760,266,6964,12892,111,43,139,69,12893,7254,102,379,80],"class_list":["post-10409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-12894","tag-12b28b","tag-283b","tag-billion","tag-contributions","tag-cost","tag-could","tag-cuts","tag-first","tag-firsts","tag-government","tag-kiwisaver","tag-mandatory","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-paired","tag-policy","tag-with","tag-year","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}