WELLINGTON – The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand has launched a strategic overhaul of its fiscal platform, unveiling a “super-rich tax” targeting the nation’s wealthiest individuals and largest corporations to fund social spending and alleviate cost-of-living pressures.
The proposal marks a significant tactical pivot for the party, scaling back more aggressive previous iterations of its wealth tax to target a narrower, higher-net-worth demographic. The center-piece of the plan is a 2.5% wealth tax on net assets exceeding $10 million, a threshold designed to provide clarity and exclude the vast majority of New Zealanders.
This policy shift reflects a broader global tension currently playing out across OECD nations: the struggle to balance economic competitiveness and capital flight against an intensifying domestic demand for wealth redistribution to combat post-pandemic inflation.
The Framework of the ‘Super-Rich Tax’
Under the proposed system, the 2.5% tax on net assets-including shares, bonds, and property-would apply only to assets above the $10 million mark, with the family home specifically exempt. According to party co-leader Marama Davidson, 99.7% of the population would remain unaffected by this specific levy, positioning it squarely as a targeted measure rather than a broad-based wealth tax.
The Greens are also reviving a “capital acquisitions tax,” effectively a redesigned inheritance tax. This would apply a 33% charge on inheritances valued over $1 million. To mitigate impacts on family enterprises and residential stability, the party has stipulated that small gifts, family homes, and farms remain exempt.
Unlike estate taxes common in many jurisdictions, this tax would be paid by the recipient rather than the estate. The party estimates this would affect approximately 1,100 people annually. The proposal would sit alongside New Zealand’s existing tax framework, which is administered under the Income Tax Act 2007, and would require substantial legislative amendment to embed the new categories of taxable wealth and inheritances.
Income Tax Restructuring and Corporate Levies
To broaden the appeal of the package, the Greens have paired high-end levies with immediate relief for low-to-middle income earners. The proposal includes:
- A new tax-free threshold: The first $10,000 of income would be tax-free, a shift from the current system where the lowest dollar is taxed at 10.5%.
- A new top marginal rate: A 45% tax rate would be introduced for income exceeding $160,000, lowering the threshold from the current 39% rate applied to income over $180,000 and sharpening progressivity at the top end.
- Corporate tax hikes: The corporate tax rate would return to 33% for companies with annual turnovers exceeding $30 million-specifically targeting banks, energy firms, and supermarket chains-while maintaining a 28% rate for small and medium enterprises.
The party is also targeting the digital economy and financial sector, proposing a 5% withholding tax on profits sent offshore by multinational tech giants such as Google, Amazon, and Meta, alongside a 0.06% bank levy on the four major banks, modelled on similar mechanisms used in Australia. These measures are framed as attempts to capture revenue from sectors seen by the Greens as under-taxed despite strong profitability.
“New Zealanders aren’t stupid, they are watching the cost of their groceries, power bills, and the cost of living go through the roof, while corporates rake in record profits,” said co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick.
The party argues that combining a higher tax burden on the wealthiest households and largest corporates with relief at the bottom end of the income scale would rebalance the tax system while remaining consistent with New Zealand’s broad-based, low-rate tax philosophy championed by the Treasury and Inland Revenue.
Economic Viability and Implementation
The Greens claim the overall package would generate $5.35 billion in additional government revenue by the 2027/28 fiscal year, rising to $5.94 billion by 2030/31. Those funds are earmarked for expanded social spending, including income support and public services intended to cushion households against persistent cost-of-living pressures.
To address concerns regarding the administrative burden of wealth tracking, Swarbrick noted that previous modelling by the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) and Treasury under the former Labour government had already explored a $10 million threshold for wealth measurement. The Greens have allocated approximately $100 million in their proposal to resource the IRD for enforcement and collection, signalling that implementation would rely heavily on the existing institutional machinery of New Zealand’s tax authorities.
An independent review by Infometrics, conducted by principal economist Brad Olsen, described the party’s costings as “valid and reasonable,” though Olsen cautioned that behavioural shifts by the wealthy-such as asset relocation, restructuring, or migration-are difficult to model with total precision. That uncertainty underpins a key point of contention between the Greens and their opponents over the policy’s real-world fiscal yield.
Political Backlash and the ‘Wrecking Ball’ Narrative
The announcement drew immediate and sharp condemnation from the governing coalition, centering on the risk of capital flight and the erosion of investment incentives at a time when economic growth and productivity are already under pressure.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon characterized the plan as a “wrecking ball” to the national economy. “If you seriously think that wealth creators and wealth generators in this country are going to hang around in New Zealand on the back of that policy, that’s quite something,” Luxon said, arguing that mobile capital and high-net-worth individuals would simply relocate.
ACT Party leader David Seymour was more caustic, describing the vision as “Hunger Games” and an expression of “tall poppy syndrome”-a cultural tendency in New Zealand and Australia to criticize those who achieve significant success.
“Most New Zealanders’ greatest motivation in life is their children … Now, Chlöe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson will be looming over the deathbed,” Seymour said. “Not even death is sacred under the Greens plan.”
Simeon Brown, National’s campaign chairperson, argued the policy reveals the funding mechanisms behind the opposition Labour Party’s promises, describing the suite of taxes as “economic lunacy” that would discourage investment and drive away global talent. While Labour has not formally adopted the Greens’ package, the governing parties are seizing on the proposal to sharpen election-year contrasts over fiscal policy and the role of the state.
Property Market Interventions
In addition to the wealth and income taxes, the Greens intend to aggressively target property speculation by reversing recent government moves to unwind the “bright-line test.”
The party proposes extending the bright-line test-which taxes capital gains on investment properties sold within a certain timeframe-back to 10 years. Under this plan, profits from such sales would be added to the seller’s annual income and taxed at their marginal rate, while interest deductibility for residential investors would be removed. The bright-line regime, a de facto capital gains tax on residential investment property introduced as part of New Zealand’s wider tax settings on land and housing, has become a key lever in successive governments’ housing strategies.
The current New Zealand government maintains that its own policies of shorter bright-line windows and restored interest deductibility are essential for increasing rental supply and stabilizing the housing market. The Greens counter that without tighter rules on speculative gains and more progressive taxation at the top, households will continue to face rising housing and living costs while wealth concentrates among a small minority.
As the package moves into the parliamentary and public arena, it sets up a clear choice for voters between competing visions of how New Zealand’s tax system should distribute the returns from wealth, property, and corporate profits-and how far the state should go in reshaping those outcomes.