May 9, 2024 4:00pm by David Farrar

Thanks Grant – NZ gets developed world’s second largest tax hike

New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says.

The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax in New Zealand was 4.5 percent higher last year compared with 2022.

That was only behind Australia, where taxes rose 7.6 percent in the same period.

Single Kiwis earning the average wage were paying tax at a rate of 24.9 percent in 2023, up from 23.2 percent a year prior, according to the OECD data released on Thursday.

This is the impact of high inflation and no indexation of tax brackets. Every year every worker pays more tax, even if their wages stay constant in real terms.