Saturday, December 3, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
The $ 7bn Economic Black Hole in the New Zealand Economy?
Today, the Dominion Post published a story that highlighted the fact that there is a shadow economy in New Zealand and that the size of this shadow economy is such that New Zealand is losing some $7bn in tax revenues. The article is said to be based on a report by the Tax Justice Network.
I have located the Tax Justice Network report, it can be found at:
http://taxjustice.blogspot.com/2011/11/tax-evasion-is-worth-31-trillion-year.html
The Tax Justice Network Report is based on the following World Bank Report:
WPS5356 Policy Research Working Paper 5356 Shadow Economies All over the World. http://search.worldbank.org/all?qterm=wps5356
The World Bank Report estimates the size of the shadow economy in 165 countries and in this report New Zealand ranks near the top as an OECD country with one of the smallest shadow economies. The shadow portion of the NZ economy is around 12.4%. The best country (Switzerland) achieves 8.4% of GDP. Only Switzerland, USA, UK, Austria and Japan have smaller shadow economies than NZ. We are not so bad after all.
While at the Tax Justice Network Blog, you may be interested in reading about Tax Havens which are the way that large Multi-National Corporations avoid paying taxes. This type of loss of taxes is not mentined in the Dominion Post article. This loss of tax dollars my well be much more than the undeclared income of the Trademe Traders and other small fry tax dodgers spoken of in the article.
I have located the Tax Justice Network report, it can be found at:
http://taxjustice.blogspot.com/2011/11/tax-evasion-is-worth-31-trillion-year.html
The Tax Justice Network Report is based on the following World Bank Report:
WPS5356 Policy Research Working Paper 5356 Shadow Economies All over the World. http://search.worldbank.org/all?qterm=wps5356
The World Bank Report estimates the size of the shadow economy in 165 countries and in this report New Zealand ranks near the top as an OECD country with one of the smallest shadow economies. The shadow portion of the NZ economy is around 12.4%. The best country (Switzerland) achieves 8.4% of GDP. Only Switzerland, USA, UK, Austria and Japan have smaller shadow economies than NZ. We are not so bad after all.
While at the Tax Justice Network Blog, you may be interested in reading about Tax Havens which are the way that large Multi-National Corporations avoid paying taxes. This type of loss of taxes is not mentined in the Dominion Post article. This loss of tax dollars my well be much more than the undeclared income of the Trademe Traders and other small fry tax dodgers spoken of in the article.
A Deeper Look at Interesting Things
From time to time, we read and hear 'things' that are of interest to us or that sway public opinion. In many instances we only get part of the story or the biased view of the writer. I will endeavour to conduct some research into topics that attract my interest and I will publish my thoughts in this blog.
I look forward to readers adding their comments and contributing their discoveries.
Gustave Le Bon in 1896 wrote 'The Crowd; Study of the Popular Mind'. Much of what he wrote we still see at work today - the 'crowd' latches onto a piece of information and proceeds as if that is the only or most relevant fact, in this way we can easily become misled. It is hoped that this blog will provide some balanced insight.
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