Taxes

Yesterday we explored social assistance payments data from the National Accounts. Today we will look at some tax data in the National Accounts. This data is found in table 22. Let's start with the seasonally adjusted and trend series. We will limit ourselves to the data since 2000.

And we begin with income taxes.

In the second last chart we can see a pick-up in corporate tax revenues in the first half of 2016-17.

Now let's look at the rest of the tax base. Of note, land taxes have rocketed with the housing boom. Also experiencing significant growth has been the taxes on financial and capital transactions. However, the rate of growth in payroll taxes has slowed.

We can also look at tax as a proportion of nominal GDP. In the following charts I have taken a four quarter rolling sum of the original tax series and divided it by a four quarter rolling sum from the original nominal GDP series. The results are expressed as a percentage.

Of note, individual income tax has increased in recent years, but is down on its late 1980s peak.

In the years before the global financial crisis (GFC), the tax take was around 30 per cent of nominal GDP (nGDP). Immediately following the GFC, it fell to 26 per cent of nGDP. Since then it has risen steadily to where it is now at just under 28 per cent of nGDP.