A few Budget snippets

Tax revenue is forecast to increase from $46b to $57b in 2010. Over the five years the total extra tax paid will be around $31b.

Core crown expenditure to increase from $46B last year to $60b in 2010.

The underlying surplus, or OBERAC, for this year is $1 billion higher than six months ago. Treasury do many many things well, but boy do they constantly under-estimate the surplus.

Cullen spins a lot on what surplus one should use, and tries to convince peopel we should go back to the 1970s and do it all by cash accounting. I doubt any countries outside Mongolia rely on cash surplsues anymore.

Now the OBERAC (excluding gains from NZSF) over 2005 to 2007 is:

04/05 – $8.7b
05/06 – $6.5b
06/07 – $5.1b

Total – $20.3b

Now if $6.5b to cover NZSF contributions was retained, then tax refunds of $13.8, over three years could have been delivered. NZ families would have. based on around 1.5 million housholds, about $9,000 per household on average.

Sigh!

Oh John Key has a great press release, stealing the UNITE unions’ language. That Labour has a Supersize Me surplus but is refusing to give NZers even a McNugget of tax relief. Nice.