Categories: General
      Date: Sep  5, 2010
     Title: Kiwisaver

Kiwisaver

The Government has named the panel who will consider whether KiwiSaver should become compulsory & whether the incentives go far enough.



But already there's a catch - Finance Minister Bill English says he can't afford to make the scheme more generous.

New Zealanders - that's all of us as individuals, including businesses and the Government - owe $180 billion to overseas lenders.

It's because we borrow to buy houses, we borrow to expand our businesses and the Government borrows to run the country.

So Mr English is getting together seven savings experts to look at how we can save more of our take home pay.

He accepts it's a hard task.

"We are in a recovery where people's incomes are growing slowly - increasing savings is a bit of an ask."

The working group will look at whether KiwiSaver should be compulsory, are the KiwiSaver subsidies fair and effective, and whether should savings be taxed at a lower rate than income.

KiwiSaver already costs the Government $1 billion a year, and Mr English says new savings incentives cannot be afforded.

"We don't have room for more large incentives, we simply can't afford that," he says.

Mr English says he doesn't want any changes to cost the Government, so the experts will have to come up with a way of paying for any new incentives.

Over 1.5 million Kiwis have joined KiwiSaver, and Mr English says the group will look at whether it should be compulsory.

"There's certainly a strong body of opinion that favours compulsion," says Mr English. "Probably more than there used to be."

But Labour is sceptical of what the Government is up to.

"What it looks like is compulsion with no real incentives for people to join," says leader Phil Goff.

The working group's report will be completed early next year, and some of the recommendations could form part of the 2011 election budget - but Mr English has made it clear he has no money to make KiwiSaver more generous than it already is without raising taxes somewhere else - and that's unlikely.