Kerre Woodham: What do you define as a fair tax system?

Let's talk tax.

It is an election year, which means a number of key policies are coming under the spotlight. All the usual suspects - health, law and order, welfare and tax.

A Newsroom article has proposed a fairer tax system that would, the author posits, bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Inequality is the enemy of society.

It's fine if we're all poor and fine if we're all rich. Where you run into problems is where you have a divide between those who don't have and those who do.

At the moment, according to the Newsroom article, our tax system depends heavily on income and consumption. So GST grabs us with consumption, PAYE and business income tax gets the tax there. Wealth, as such, is not taxed apart from rates.

The author argues that by leaving wealth and capital gains untaxed, the Government has less funding than it should have to spend on the common good. New Zealand spends about 30 percent of our GDP annually.

A number of Scandinavian countries, who top the polls in just about every kind of happiness survey and well-being survey, spend more than 40 percent and that, the author says, provides their citizens with better public services and lower levels of health and social problems. 

I have to say, over the recent years I've started to resent paying as much tax as I do. Before, I didn't mind it at all.

Having been someone who was on a low wage, I was never on a benefit, but I had been on a low wage. I'd been a single mum. The fact that I could pay more in tax meant that I was doing better. And I didn't mind redistributing at all, because I could see where it was going.

Now, not so much, when you see the waste of money - that really rips my nighty and it makes me resentful. And I don't like feeling like that.

I'm proud of earning my keep in society. I'm proud of working extra jobs, earning extra money, paying extra taxes. Or at least I used to be. So what's fair?

And what ensures we all have the best chance of success and the best chance of thriving and what really is a beautiful country. 

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