They say that it is regressive and will hurt Auckland's poor the most.

Transport minister, Phil Twyford, says he wants a fuel excise duty increase of between nine and 12 cents a litre.

Furthermore, Aucklanders would have to pay a council tax on petrol. The combined taxes may cost them an extra 20 cents per litre.

Twyford says he would use the money to pay for improvements to road safety and rapid rail.

But the poor - owners of older, less fuel-efficient cars - will bear the brunt of the petrol tax, critics say.

The Automobile Association (AA) has found the taxes will cost each motorist around $250 a year.

The Salvation Army calls the combined Auckland taxes a double-whammy fuel cost increase.

Lieutenant Colonel Ian Huston heads the charity's social policy and parliamentary unit.

He has "some concerns" about the cost of transport for people on limited budgets.

He says that car-dependent families struggling to meet costs may first cut food spending, then power to defray the increased costs of getting to and from work.

Economist does sums

NZ Initiative economist, Sam Warburton, says petrol excise duty is grossly regressive.

He says the tax will hurt owners of older cars most.

The amount of fuel tax people will pay varies by how much fuel their vehicle uses.

"It's easy to imagine that low-income people have older, less fuel-efficient vehicles and that, with bigger families, Maori and Pacific Island families might more often own vans and bigger cars."

He says the new petrol taxes, combined with existing ones, will cost poor families $1,100 dollars a year. That's more than twice the cost to owners of modern cars.

The further the poor drive, the worse off they'll be, he says.

The government argues that better public transport will help the poor more in the long run.

But Auckland Action Against Poverty (AAAP) says the petrol taxes will hurt the poor the most.

AAAP says the government has hamstrung itself by its unwillingness to introduce progressive taxation or increase Government spending.

Instead, it says the government relies on regressive taxes that do nothing to redistribute wealth in this country.

Source:

• Stuff
• Scoop
• Stuff
• Image: Stuff

At its annual conference last week a resolution was passed to present a letter to the government outlining the church's objection.

The rejection of the government's plan was widely supported by the Church's membership.

"This is not a type of local government, I mean this is a church," church member Tautolo Masele told the Sunday Samoan.

He said it would mean a double tax. "I mean we are not only paying taxes to the government through other ways and now we will all be taxed again through the faifeau."

The Minister of Revenue, Ti'alavea Tionisio Hunt says the government is in the process of reviewing the law to make sure every one pays taxes.

He said the review includes the existing law which allows church Ministers not to pay tax on their incomes.

In March, when the proposal was first aired, the Chairman of the Samoa National Council of Churches, Deacon Kasiano Le'aupepe, cautioned the government over its plan.

He said taxing ministers of religion was sensitive matter because way churches were funded differed from church to church.

Leaupepe said for that reason the National Council of Churches did not have an official opinion on the proposal.

He said each church would have to make its own response.

Source

• sobserver.ws
• Image: altarandthrone.com

Virginia Raggi, 37, had said that if elected, she would pursue claims worth €250m and €400m.

These are allegedly unpaid taxes on the Vatican's real estate holdings and other assets.

The taxes had never been collected, she claimed, because past city administrations had been too afraid to take on the Church.

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South Korea has an estimated 360,000 priests and monks whose earnings will be re-classified as "religious income", rather than the current label of "honorarium".

A sliding scale means those earning 40 million won (US$34,500) or less a year will only be taxed on 20 per cent of their income.

At the upper end, those earning more than 150 million won will have to pay tax on 80 per cent of their income.

Public opinion polls have long favoured extending tax responsibilities to religious groups.

Some religious groups are highly secretive about their financial arrangements.

"Pastors who receive benefits and gifts outside of their monthly income and do not pay income taxes can be perceived as not doing their duties as members of the community," said Kim Ai-Hee, secretary general of the Korean Christian Alliance for Church Reform.

Catholic priests have voluntarily paid income tax since the mid-1990s, AFP reported.

But the most vocal opponents of the new tax policy are within the larger Protestant community which wields considerable political clout.

Some individual Protestant churches boast enormous congregations and considerable wealth, and are run like mini-fiefdoms with pastors passing control of the church and its business down to their children.

Last year, David Yonggi Cho, the pastor of the biggest congregation of all, at the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, was handed a three-year suspended jail term for embezzling millions of dollars.

But the opponents of taxation insist their stance is grounded in principle rather than self-interest.

"Taxing religious practitioners equates religious activities with commercial activities," a conservative Protestant group, the Commission of Churches in Korea, said in a statement.

A spokesman for the commission, Choi Kwi-Soo, also noted that Protestant pastors who, unlike monks and Catholic priests, generally marry and have families, would be hardest hit.

"They are different from monks or priests who can live on a relatively meagre income. That should be taken into account," Choi told AFP.

Sources

• AFP
• Image: Christian Post