The backfiring cost of living bribe

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has distanced herself from campaign material claiming “more than two million New Zealanders” received the cost of living payment on Monday, when in fact it was closer to 1.3m.

She can distance herself from it, but it is her party claiming it. They said it will go to over two million and it is barely half that.

It comes as the $116 payment – the first of three over three months – comes under criticism with potentially thousands of ineligible people receiving it.

700,000 fewer living Kiwis in NZ are getting it, but thousands of Kiwis living overseas or dead are getting it!

IRD has also explained for similar reasons it cannot rule out the payment potentially going to accounts of deceased people.

It has. I was informed by a lawyer yesterday that IRD paid $116.67 into the trust account of a client who died in December 2020. It seems the Government is incapable of ever cross-referencing with the deaths register.

On Tuesday, a Labour campaign email asking for donations stated: “More than two million New Zealanders received $116 from the new Cost of Living Payment”.

Don’t you love it. They take money from taxpayers, and then give some of it back to some people, and claim that in return for doing so, you should donate money to Labour!

The Government has hired an extra 700 people just to administer this handout which has gone to half the people they claimed it would, and thousands who are overseas or dead. There is a way they could have avoided all this.

They could have dropped the bottom tax rate on income up to $14,000 by 3% for a year. It would have needed no extra staff for IRD and would have gone to every single New Zealander who earned income and paid tax in New Zealand.

But Labour hate cutting taxes, so instead they went for an inefficient handout that isn’t getting to half those they promised it would, and to people who are no longer living in New Zealand.