Tax — make the wealthy pay their fair share

The Policy: TPM Tax Policy — 2023 Election →

Pitched as a fundamental restructuring of New Zealand's tax system to shift the burden from wage earners and low-income households to those who hold accumulated wealth, Te Pāti Māori's tax policy is the most redistributive package put forward by any party in the 2026 election cycle. Co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer have framed it as correcting a system that, in Waititi's words, was built to "take from the poor and give to the rich."

What it does:

Income tax relief for most earners

Te Pāti Māori proposes a completely restructured income tax schedule that creates a $30,000 tax-free band. The proposed brackets are: 0% on income up to $30,000; 15% on $30,000–$60,000; 33% on $60,000–$90,000; 39% on $90,000–$180,000; 42% on $180,000–$300,000; and 48% on income above $300,000. The party estimates 4.2 million New Zealanders — over 98% of taxpayers — would keep more of their income. A person earning $60,000/year would be around $125/week better off; someone on $90,000 around $119/week better off. Only those earning above approximately $200,000 would pay more income tax overall.

Wealth tax on high-net-worth individuals

A net wealth tax would apply annually: 2% on net wealth over $2 million; 4% on wealth over $5 million; 8% on wealth over $10 million. Mortgages and debts are deducted, most family homes are excluded, and retirement savings are exempt. The party projects this would raise $23 billion annually — though that figure is disputed (see below). Party president John Tamihere cited Stats NZ data showing that 2% of New Zealanders own 50% of national wealth, with the richest 10% holding 49% of total household net worth, while the wealthiest 1% — around 40,000 people — control 17.5% of all wealth.

Capital gains and property taxes

At the party's 2023 campaign launch, Waititi declared capital gains tax a bottom line for any coalition deal, noting: "if we had capital gains taxes back in 2018, this country would have made $200 billion." The detailed package includes a 2% annual tax on property appreciation (excluding the family home); a land banking tax of 33% on land value increases if land sits undeveloped for four or more years; and a vacant/ghost house tax of 33% applied to properties untenanted for six or more months. (Māori freehold land is exempt from the land banking levy.) The party also cites 39,000 unoccupied dwellings in greater Auckland and 196,506 vacant homes nationwide as justification.

Corporate and foreign company taxes

Company tax would rise from 28% to 33%, projected to generate a further $3.5 billion. A new 2% Overseas Financial Transfer Tax would apply to foreign companies operating in New Zealand. The party also proposes investing $500 million in Inland Revenue's enforcement capacity, arguing this would recover an estimated $7 billion lost annually to tax evasion.

GST on food

GST would be removed from all food — a cost the party estimates at $3.4 billion but frames as equivalent to "seven weeks of groceries" returned to households annually. Independent economist Brad Olsen noted the government "would struggle to make up the $3.4 billion" such a cut would create, and AUT taxation lecturer Ranjana Gupta argued the "costs of tampering with New Zealand's current GST system far outweigh the benefits."

The result:

The package was welcomed by a broad civil-society coalition including the Fair Tax Coalition, representing 19 organisations from Oxfam Aotearoa and Amnesty International to the NZ Nurses Organisation and Child Poverty Action Group. Fair Tax Coalition chair Glenn Barclay praised the proposals as "an innovative set of policies" that "ask more of those who can afford it." The Public Health Communication Centre concluded that only Te Pāti Māori and the Greens offered policies likely to produce "major shifts towards increased fairness" in the tax system.

Critics were equally emphatic. ACT leader David Seymour described the package as "built atop a $30 billion hole," arguing the claimed $23 billion wealth-tax yield was unrealistic and that an 8% annual wealth tax — more than double the highest comparable rate internationally — would eliminate the incentive to invest in New Zealand. National's campaign chair Chris Bishop said the agenda "would send a wrecking ball through New Zealand's economy." Overall costing was disputed: the income tax cuts alone were estimated at $13.7 billion, requiring the contested new revenue streams to fully offset them. An RNZ-Reid Research poll found just 42% of New Zealanders support a capital gains tax on properties (excluding the family home), while 33% oppose it — and when the family home is included, support collapses to 11%. Interestingly, nearly 50% of Te Pāti Māori's own supporters opposed CGT in that poll.

Following the party's internal turbulence in late 2025, The Spinoff reported that a promised policy refresh remained incomplete, with Ngarewa-Packer signalling a wealth tax would feature in the 2026 manifesto but specifics still unannounced as of mid-2026.

The Sweden comparison

One of the most-cited international reference points for Te Pāti Māori's broader ambition is Scandinavia — Sweden in particular. The comparison is instructive not as a blueprint but as evidence that high-tax systems can produce high-quality social outcomes without economic collapse.

Tax-to-GDP: a 7-point gap. According to OECD Revenue Statistics 2024, Sweden collected 41.4% of GDP in taxes in 2024. New Zealand's equivalent figure was approximately 34% (close to the OECD average of 34.1%). That 7-point gap — roughly $25–30 billion in New Zealand terms — funds a substantially different social compact.

What Swedish taxes fund:

• Universal healthcare — health spending reached 11.2% of GDP in 2023, with 86% publicly funded through county-council income taxes; out-of-pocket patient costs are capped annually
• Free university education — tuition is free for all EU/EEA students, with living costs covered by student grants and low-interest loans
• 480 days paid parental leave — parents share 480 days of parental benefit per child, with 390 days paid at approximately 80% of qualifying income; 90 days are reserved for each parent and cannot be transferred to the other
• Subsidised childcare — parents contribute roughly 17% of the total cost; the remainder is publicly funded through central government grants and local taxes
• Generous unemployment insurance — administered through voluntary funds (a-kassor), providing 80% of previous salary for the first 200 days

Income tax structure. Sweden's top marginal rate is 52.4% (combining a ~32% local/municipal rate with a 20% national rate on higher incomes). Sweden also taxes capital gains at 30% — compared to New Zealand's current rate of zero for most assets. By contrast, New Zealand's top personal rate is 39% with no capital gains tax, no inheritance tax, and health spending at approximately 8–9% of GDP on government figures.

Inequality outcomes. The distributional effects are measurable. Sweden's Gini coefficient (a standard measure of income inequality, where 0 is perfect equality and 1 is perfect inequality) is approximately 0.29, among the lowest in the OECD. New Zealand's equivalent is approximately 0.32–0.33 — notably higher, and above the OECD average. As The Conversation noted in a 2024 analysis of OECD data, ["inequalities in Australia and New Zealand lie between [Scandinavian countries] but further from the Scandinavians and closer to the Anglo-Americans."](https://theconversation.com/oecd-comparisons-reveal-an-unflattering-picture-of-inequality-in-nz-could-that-change-239306)

The Sweden comparison does not resolve the debate over Te Pāti Māori's specific tax design — critics would note that Sweden's revenue base relies heavily on broad consumption taxes (VAT at 25%, raising 8.7% of GDP) and social insurance contributions rather than a high annual wealth tax alone. But the comparison does rebut the claim that higher tax inevitably means economic ruin: Sweden consistently ranks among the world's most competitive economies, with higher per-capita living standards and lower inequality than New Zealand.

The impacts to watch:

• Capital flight and investment behaviour: International experience with high annual wealth taxes — notably France's wealth tax, partly unwound due to capital outflows — raises questions about whether an 8% rate on wealth above $10 million would achieve projected yields without prompting asset restructuring or emigration among very high-net-worth individuals.
• Housing market effects: Land banking and vacant-house levies could unlock supply in tight urban markets, but implementation and valuation complexity is significant; exemptions for Māori freehold land create a two-tier framework that will attract constitutional scrutiny.
• Revenue risk concentration: The package relies heavily on the $23 billion wealth-tax projection; if that figure is overstated (as critics argue), the $13.7 billion income tax cut becomes unfunded, creating structural fiscal pressure.
• Coalition leverage: With Te Pāti Māori signalling CGT and wealth tax as non-negotiable bottom lines for any post-2026 coalition, the party's negotiating position could significantly influence what a centre-left government can credibly pursue.