WHAT WAS CLAIMED
The New Zealand Green Party's tax policy would cost each household $10,141 per year.
OUR VERDICT
Misleading. Most of the tax burden would be targeted at large corporations and high-net-worth individuals rather than evenly spread across households.
AAP FACTCHECK - A New Zealand lobby group is making a misleading claim that the Green Party's tax policy will cost every Kiwi household more than $10,000.
A tax expert told AAP FactCheck the claim relies on "simplistic" and "inaccurate" calculations that divide total proposed revenue evenly across the nation's households.
The policy states that most of the tax burden would be borne by large companies and high-net-worth individuals.
The Taxpayers' Union (TPU) made the claim in a June 24 Facebook post after the Green Party published its tax policy ahead of the November 7 election.
The post features an image of Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick with overlay text reading: "The Greens call this a plan for fairness."
"At $10,141 per household, New Zealanders might have a different word for it."
A red "-$10,141" price tag is superimposed over the image.
A link in the post's comments leads to a TPU press release that claims the Green Party's plan amounts to a $22.6 billion tax grab.
"This is a prescription for a poorer New Zealand, with the proposed new taxes amounting to $10,141 per household in the first four years alone," the release reads.
AAP FactCheck asked the TPU for its calculations, but did not receive a response.
The $22.6 billion figure came from the Green Party's tax policy paper and referred to the additional tax that would be collected between 2027/28 and 2030/31 if its policies were implemented.
This included $32.2 billion in new revenue measures and $10.4 billion in new expenses.
However, the original policy document included an error that put its costings out by around $800 million.
The corrected document included an estimated total net tax increase of $21.8 billion, not $22.6 billion (page 9).
If spread evenly across New Zealand's 2,064,700 households, as measured by Stats NZ at the end of March 2026, the corrected figures average at $10,540 per household over four years, compared with $10,939 using the original erroneous calculation.
However, the tax changes would not affect all households equally.
Lisa Marriott, a tax policy expert at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington, said the TPU presented the impact of the Greens' policy in a "simplistic and pretty inaccurate" way.
"Most of the Green Party taxes are targeted at specific groups, rather than the general population," Professor Marriott told AAP FactCheck.
For example, the party's so-called "super-rich tax" would raise $15.8 billion over four years, accounting for about half of the additional revenue collected, according to the document (p.9).
It states that the tax would be levied only on individuals with net assets exceeding $10 million, excluding the family home, and would affect 0.3 per cent of New Zealanders (p3).
"As suggested in the name, the tax is highly targeted at the super-rich, so will have no impact on most households," Prof Marriott said.
Other tax proposals target large companies and account for about a quarter of the projected additional revenue raised.
These include increasing the corporate tax rate to 33 per cent for companies with an annual turnover exceeding $30 million, a 0.06 per cent levy on large banks, and a five per cent tax on the offshore profits of big tech firms (p7).
The party's tax policy document estimates that these three measures would raise $8.3 billion over four years (p9).
Prof Marriott said it was unclear how much those corporate tax changes would impact individual households.
"It is possible that costs could flow through to consumers, in which case they would be felt at the household level, but ultimately that would be determined by the market," she said.
The party has also proposed preventing residential property investors from claiming mortgage interest as a tax deduction, and taxing capital gains on investment properties sold within 10 years of purchase, rather than the current two years.
In 2021, Inland Revenue estimated that about 250,000 people would be affected by changes to interest deductibility (p18).
Prof Marriott said the investment property tax changes could lead to higher rents, but this would depend on market conditions.
The Greens' policy also includes a 33 per cent tax on inheritances or gifts valued at more than $1 million, which would generate $4.1 billion over four years (p6).
The inheritance and gifts measure would affect 1100 people each year, according to the document (p6).
The tax policy also includes proposed changes to income tax brackets that would directly affect most households, including a new tax-free threshold on income up to $10,000 and a new top tax rate of 45 per cent on income over $160,000.
However, bracket changes would reduce the government's overall income tax revenue, according to the document.
Most people would pay less income tax than under current settings, according to AAP FactCheck calculations, though individuals earning over around $162,000 would pay more.
About 4.6 per cent of taxpayers earned more than $162,000 in 2024, according to the most recent Inland Revenue figures.
The Green Party tax policy document estimates that its proposals would reduce the total income tax burden by about $10 billion over four years (p9), equivalent to a saving of about $4850 per household.
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