A tax specialist does not believe there are "nasty surprises" in Aotearoa's financial position, as suggested by the Prime Minister.
Christopher Luxon made the comments in his State of the Nation speech in Auckland yesterday and listed Kāinga Ora's balance sheet, transport budget short falls and infrastructure debt as some of the challenges ahead.
He repeatedly signalled tough choices were needed to get the country back on financial track in what he described as a "big turn-around job".
But accountant and tax specialist Terry Baucher told Checkpoint the government should have been aware of the fiscal situation.
"That's the whole idea behind PREFU, the Pre-Election Fiscal Update. We have an extremely open set of public books.
"It's amazing the amount of detail you can dig around and find ... so transparency is there, and you have to know where you're looking but, you know, that's their job."
Baucher said the government's comments so far were potentially signalling that cuts were going to be deeper than initial plans.
"They seem to be indicating that in order to deliver the tax relief ... they may have to make other cuts."
But a Treasury briefing to the Finance Minister said that there would be a substantial fiscal consolidation required, he said.
"They talk about needing perhaps to raise taxes or looking ... expanding the tax base to meet the demand."
Baucher said it was a possibility that the government might have less public sector cuts and so deliver smaller tax cuts too.
He also pointed to fiscal drag or bracket creep as a problem.
Terry Baucher Photo: Supplied
"Salaries increase thanks to wage inflation and earners cross a tax threshold and their tax rate increases on their next dollar.
"The key point at the moment is $48,000 where below that the tax rate is 17.5 percent, above it, it's 30 percent."
Baucher said those rates have not been changed since October 2010 so they're "well overdue".
He said fiscal drag was a "sneaky way" governments have been raising taxes.
"In the Half-Year Fiscal Economic Update, they estimate fiscal drag is worth $4.5 billion over the next four and a half years."
National has said that it intended to adjust those brackets, but its coalition agreements only commit to changing them this year.
Baucher believed bracket creep changes should be programmed and inflation adjusted because that was "transparent".
"You don't get a scenario where governments are raking in extra money and putting extreme pressure on a small group of people, actually it's the lowest income earners who suffer highest under bracket creep."
