Tax Changes Won't Keep Kiwis Home
Fran O'Sullivan thinks that the 2010 budget may change the thinking of present and future expats:
Kiwis have been sent a clear message to stay home and build their careers here with today's Budget package that will result in New Zealanders paying less tax that Australians once they hit the $50,000 pay rate.
Later on in the article O'Sullivan mentions OECD rates of expatriatism: ours is apparently third highest in the world. But see, funny thing about the OECD: they say our tax rate was already one of the lowest in the world before the budget.
The OECD Factblog, this month, posted a nice interactive graph. It shows that, for all eight family types in the dataset, New Zealand has one of the three lowest tax rates in the OECD. Our taxes are already lower than the vast majority of countries New Zealanders leave for: adding Mexico and Korea to that list is not going to make much difference.
Expats clearly don't go overseas for lower taxes. They go overseas for higher wages.