Quote Originally Posted by elZorro View Post
I thought this had been covered before. National (Bill English) used to say that lower income households paid no tax. Maybe no net income tax, but they do pay GST on almost everything, plus fuel and alcohol, cigarette levies etc. Plus profits from power companies.. Handouts from govt to even things out will, to a large extent, end back with the govt as income from various sources. I would also dispute that the top 20% pay most of the GST (more than 50%), how about some figures? Also, if you're looking at businesses, for them GST is a neutral item removed form their books. If they sell stuff only in NZ, they should be paying GST across each period, but they first collect it from their customers, or end users. They don't pay the GST, they just collect it. Exporters don't have any GST on their overseas sales to collect, so they get all their GST costs back each period.
Thanks for that eZ, but I think you'll find that most readers on this site are over the age of seven, and therefore understand how GST works.