Tax News

Some good news from around the world recently, regarding tax rates. Poland is introducing a new flat tax rate of 17%, to be introduced in 2010-2011. Poland will be the latest member to join Eastern Europe's highly successful Flat Tax Club, with nations such as trail-blazing Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia and the Czech Republic been responsible for most of Eastern Europe's growth recently.

Iceland and Taiwan are cutting their corporate tax rates. Iceland already has a flat tax of 36% (hardly ideal, admittedly), and is going to drop their corporate tax rate from 18% t0 15% (compare this with the corporate tax rate in the US, which is 39%+). Taiwan's corporate tax rate is going to be cut from 25% to 17.5%.

Although our politicians here in New Zealand, both on the Left and Right, are promising tax cuts for the 2008 election, why don't we follow this promising trend in the world and flatten our tax rates? Flat tax has been incredibly successful in all nations it has been implemented in. When/if we do, Kiwis will finally be deserving of the Tiger status that all our ingenuity, unfortunately, hasn't been able to achieve.