ACT leader David Seymour says tax cuts are needed in New Zealand despite criticism of his fellow right bloc National Party's fiscal policies.
It comes after a UK announcement of large tax cuts last week caused market turmoil and the pound to fall to record lows, forcing British Prime Minister Liz Truss into a humiliating U-turn of reversing a cut to the highest rate of income tax.
The National Party also wants to implement tax cuts if elected. It wants to increase tax brackets to meet inflation and stop low-medium income earners from being trapped in higher brackets. It also plans to ditch the 39 percent top tax rate for high-income earners which Labour brought in.
It would see National leader Christopher Luxon himself pocket an extra $18,000 in income tax reduction if he became Prime Minister.
Seymour told AM Early on Thursday while he hadn't seen National's exact policy, he said it would be "irresponsible" to cut taxes without slashing wasteful spending.
"If you just cut the taxes and keep on spending then you're borrowing money against your kids' future taxes - so it's not even a tax cut it's just a tax delay," he explained to host Nicky Styris.
"The second thing I would say is that we do need tax cuts in New Zealand because we have so much pressure on household budgets - you've got to give some relief… ACT is the only party that's produced a fully costed, alternative budget where we've laid out, 'This is Government spending that needs to stop, we can't afford it at this point in New Zealand and history - and here's how much tax relief we'd give you.'"
He added ACT wanted to reduce Government spending by $7.2 billion.
Alongside that, ACT has proposed simplifying the tax system with a two-rate structure; 17.5 percent up to $70,000 and 28 percent after that, with a low- and middle-income tax offset and carbon tax refund.
Overall, Seymour said ACT would reduce taxes by about $3.6 billion.
"What that would mean is, say, a nurse on $70,000 with one kid would get $2300 back that they don't have to pay in tax anymore, so just over $2000 in tax relief for a middle-earner, and we'd do it by reducing spending but we wouldn't touch a single dollar of health, education, police or any frontline service - we'd do it by reducing the size of the bureaucracy."
The National Party's tax cut policy has come under fire from Labour and some economists, while other experts have said it was unfair to compare National's proposed cuts to the UK's.
National leader Christopher Luxon was asked by AM on Wednesday where the money would come from to fund his party's proposed tax cuts.
"There's a huge amount of waste, there's a lot of low-priority projects and there's also a bunch of projects that we need to get better value out of," Luxon said of the current Government's spending.
"We're spending $2 billion more each and every year on 14,000 more bureaucrats since this Government's come to power - that's something that you've got to cut."
