Commie Pervert Geek Girl, June 2005
Originally published in Express

The current clamour for tax cuts is quite overwhelming. Everyone's jumping on the bandwagon - even the Greens accept Labour's tax threshold adjustments.

But tax cuts don't come for free. Taxes subsidise AIDS drugs, treatment for breast cancer (for which lesbians are a high risk group), and other health care. Taxes pay for our schools, for police, and for an almost endless array of other public services. Any reduction in tax has to be met with an equal reduction in public spending.

The New Zealand Aids Foundation, for example, obtains a big chunk of its funding through taxes. Considering the link between social conservatism and right-wing economics, the NZAF is highly likely to find itself in the firing line of any cost-cutting government. Why waste money on a bunch of homos when there are prisons to be built?

Sometimes taxes are spent less wisely than we might wish, but no system is perfect, and there's often disagreement over what qualifies as reasonable spending. Some people would object to public funds going to queer groups like Rainbow Youth, that we recognise as highly valuable. Costs quoted in the media can sound outrageous, but divide the amount by four million before deciding whether they're worth getting worked up about. The notorious hip hop tour, for example, cost us less than one cent each. A mistake, yes, but a trivial one requiring a tightening of procedures, not incontrovertible proof that the government is wasting our hard-earned money.

Inevitably, it's the people with the most money who stand to gain most and lose least from across-the-board tax cuts. Advocates for tax cuts like to claim that they benefit everyone, but that's only true if you ignore the resulting costs in lost services and higher fees. It also ignores the vital question of who benefits by how much - even lifting the thresholds as Labour intends benefits the rich by ten times as much as the poor.

Cutting the actual tax rates is even worse, as the higher a person's income, the more they benefit from cuts. ACT's tax regime would put an extra $30,000 a year each in the hands of CEOs on quarter-million salaries - more than the average Kiwi earns in a year - while people struggling on low incomes would only get a few hundred dollars extra. Paul Holmes would be better off by well over a hundred grand a year - but hey, that's worth sacrificing a few hip replacements for, right?

If you really can't live without a tax cut, both the Greens and the Alliance would eliminate tax altogether on the first few thousand dollars of income, while maintaining the total tax take through increases elsewhere. This would leave the majority of New Zealanders better off, and if you're lucky enough to be on an income that would be taxed more, do you really begrudge a bit of extra money going to families making do with half your income or less?