Summarised by Centrist
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union (TPU) has released a booklet arguing that higher earners already carry most of the country’s personal income tax burden.
Tax Inequality: Who really pays their fair share? TPU uses Inland Revenue’s taxable-income statistics, which included 4.69 million individuals in the 2024 tax year. Together, they reported almost $268 billion in taxable personal income and paid $60.7 billion in income tax.
The highest-earning 20 per cent, comprising 938,784 taxpayers, received about 52 per cent of taxable income and paid approximately 64 per cent of the income tax collected.
Within that group, the top 10 per cent earned about 34 per cent of taxable income but paid 45 per cent of income tax. Their $27.2 billion contribution exceeded the $22.1 billion paid by the bottom 80 per cent combined.
TPU says the top 1 per cent, comprising 46,939 taxpayers, paid approximately $8.3 billion. That was more than the $5.4 billion paid by the bottom 2.35 million taxpayers combined.
The group also estimates that higher-income households contribute a larger share of GST because they spend more. Its calculations put the top 20 per cent’s share at almost 35 per cent of total GST, compared with about 10 per cent from the bottom fifth. The GST estimates use 2023 household expenditure data adjusted to early-2026 prices.
Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson Tory Relf said people could debate whether higher earners should contribute more, but could not claim they were not already paying the largest share.
TPU argues the figures weaken the case for wealth, capital gains and inheritance taxes, as well as higher income tax rates. It acknowledges that determining a “fair” share remains a political judgement. Its figures show how the present tax burden is distributed, rather than settling how it should be distributed.
