{"id":571651,"date":"2026-08-17T11:50:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T11:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/571651\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T11:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T11:50:15","slug":"election-2026-kiwis-left-17000-worse-off-by-opportunity-tax-plan-should-look-at-the-bigger-picture-qiulae-wong-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/571651\/","title":{"rendered":"Election 2026: Kiwis left $17,000 worse off by Opportunity tax plan should \u2018look at the bigger picture\u2019, Qiulae Wong says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wong also conceded that the party had not modelled any wealth flight under the scheme, despite the fact that it would hike income taxes on high earners and levy taxes on landowners of $24 billion a year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The tax is designed to reduce house prices by 10-15%. The average Auckland sale price is currently about $950,000, meaning the policy would cost Auckland home owners about $140,000 in lost value.<\/p>\n

Opportunity also wants to hike income tax rates. Income earned between $50,000 and $200,000 would be taxed at 34% and income above $200,000 would be taxed at 39%.<\/p>\n

This pays for a citizen\u2019s income payment of $19,400 a year, which means that most New Zealanders will be better off in income terms each year \u2013 although the 66% of households who own a home will be worse off to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost value.<\/p>\n

You need to live in New Zealand for five of the last 10 years to qualify for the citizen\u2019s income, which is why people returning home from overseas are left so badly off. <\/p>\n

Wong noted that people returning home from overseas often did so not for economic reasons, but to \u201cbe closer to family\u201d.<\/p>\n

Her answer did not address whether it was fair to hit Kiwis returning to be with family with such high taxes.<\/p>\n

Tame noted that 1.5 million New Zealanders were living overseas who might not want to return if they were to be hit with such high taxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, if I was putting myself in those shoes and I was looking at coming back to New Zealand and I knew that there were big economic changes that were making this a more prosperous future for me and my kids, I would be willing to pay that tax because I knew I would be better off in the long run and my kids would be better off in the long run,\u201d Wong said.<\/p>\n

She said \u201cthere was a risk\u201d that many New Zealanders would not return home under her policies but she said this was balanced out by the incentives created by the more productive economy Opportunity wanted to build.<\/p>\n

Recent migrants would also be ineligible for the citizen\u2019s income but would face higher taxes.<\/p>\n

Wong also admitted that Opportunity had not modelled any wealth flight.<\/p>\n

Wealth flight occurs when taxes get so high that people hide wealth or leave the country to avoid paying them. Recent wealth tax proposals from Labour in 2023 and the Greens in 2026 began a public debate on what is a reasonable assumption of wealth flight.<\/p>\n

Wealth flight tends to be higher for wealth taxes which are easier to avoid. Land taxes are harder to flee from because it is difficult to hide land and impossible to take it out of the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t put wealth flight into our modelling,\u201d Wong said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe system we are creating is actually more attractive to people with high incomes \u2013 if they don\u2019t own property or if they own modest amounts of property, they will be paying less tax because of the citizen\u2019s income,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

In New Zealand, it is relatively common for people with higher incomes to own property.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wong also conceded that the party had not modelled any wealth flight under the scheme, despite the fact…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[80514,2246,1443,1975,41216,3595,24392,5903,27308,42,6132,5345,807,13489,101,13457,43,6662,6452,4762,7234,1319,2170,7254,93584,3048,312,3271,544,7496,223,40,38,41,39,8238,93585,40866,6730,379,24750],"class_list":["post-571651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-80514","tag-2246","tag-about","tag-at","tag-bigger","tag-by","tag-each","tag-election","tag-extra","tag-headlines","tag-income","tag-increase","tag-kiwis","tag-leader","tag-left","tag-look","tag-news","tag-off","tag-opportunity","tag-party","tag-partys","tag-picture","tag-plan","tag-policy","tag-qiulae","tag-said","tag-says","tag-should","tag-some","tag-tax","tag-the","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-under","tag-wong","tag-worse","tag-would","tag-year","tag-zealanders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571651","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=571651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}