Seymour on corporate welfare

The Herald reports:

Seymour also slammed the $130 million taxpayer subsidies through NZ on Air for programmes such as The X Factor ($800,000), Mastermind ($685,000), Jono and Ben ($1.7 million) and Find me a Maori Bride ($590,000).

He said the $56 million-a-year Marsden Fund, which funds academic research, had even more ridiculous examples.

“What do taxpayers really gain from funding research on ‘Cultivating chamber music in Beethoven’s Vienna: a study in socio-musicology,’ ($580,000); or anti-trade activist Jane Kelsey’s ‘Transcending embedded neoliberalism in international economic regulation’ ($600,000); or ‘Missing narratives of modern Chinese intellectual history: modernity and writings on art, 1900-1930’ ($495,000)?”

All good examples of taxpayer funding spending we could do without.

Seymour said he had identified $1.1 billion in waste and corporate welfare that he would cut immediately to help fund his proposed tax cuts.

The current four tax rates (10.5 per cent, 17.5 per cent, 30 per cent and 33 per cent) would be simplified to three rates: 10 per cent, 15 per cent and 25 per cent.

That would mean a tax cut for every worker: $1516 more a year for the average wage earner on $59,920, $2020 a year for someone on $70,000 and $4124 a year from someone on $96,300.

I’d rather have the tax cut than be funding Jane Kelsey and The X Factor.