Jacinda left out two of her taxes

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s calculation of how much extra tax Kiwis are paying at the petrol pump on Monday did not include the recent excise tax or Auckland’s Regional Fuel tax.

Which comes to 15 cents a litre. Which means what she said was junk information.

National Leader Simon Bridges said the Prime Minister has got this “badly wrong,” and has made a “staggering mistake.”

But a spokesman for the Prime Minister said her comments were “based on the most accurate information Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) had compiled at that time.”

At a press conference on Monday, Ardern said consumers were being “fleeced” at the petrol pump, blaming this on the increased margins of petrol companies.

Between October 27, 2017 and September 28 this year, petrol prices have risen 39c, according to MBIE data – Ardern said just 6.8c of that increase was due to “taxes and levies.”

That 6.8c increase is made up of a 1.77c increase in Emissions Trading Scheme (EST) taxes and 5.04c of GST over the same period, MBIE data shows.

But the 10c a litre Auckland Regional Fuel Tax and 3.5c a litre fuel excise tax, introduced on September 30, were not included in the “taxes and levies” side of Ardern’s equation.

So she said it was 6.8 cents more when in fact it was more than 20 cents in extra tax.

You can sign a petition calling on the Government to axe their tax increases here.

I don;’t object to petrol tax on motorists increasing if it is spent on projects that benefit motorists. But Labour and Greens are slashing spending on roads and spending it on stuff such as cycleways that maybe eight people a day use.