Left or right?

Where 2026 policy sits, not a poll.

• TPM. Left. Māori rights. Make Waitangi Tribunal recommendations binding, and let a Treaty commission pause a Cabinet decision if it finds a serious breach. Shut prisons by 2040. Their 2026 tax plan adds a buyer charge on house sales and a wealth tax from $2 million. Further left than Labour or the Greens on the state and on Māori power.
• Green. Left. Environment and a bigger welfare state. A 2.5% tax on net wealth over $10 million, plus a tax on big inheritances. That is a small, rich group, not wage earners. Also 40,000 state houses, rent caps, a public supermarket, and cancelling fast-track mines.
• Labour. Centre-left. Official opposition. Keep public services, cheaper doctors and buses, and a tax only on the profit from selling a rental. Not the family home. Most households will never pay it. Surplus by 2028/29, the same year as National. Day-to-day spending still ends a little higher.
• Opportunity. Centre to centre-left. Not in Parliament yet. They say they are in the centre. The policies sit left of National: a land tax, a citizen's income, oceans, and the Treaty. The land tax would fall on ordinary urban landowners. National has already said no because of tax. Hipkins opened the door after 12 August, but not the land tax.
• National. Centre-right. In government now. Low tax, surplus, compulsory KiwiSaver. Shrink day-to-day spending as a share of the economy. On 23 August they pledged no new taxes. Cabinet locked a one-year delay on the next fuel-tax rise. Smaller rises start in 2028. A freeze for the whole next term is not locked. Luxon made staying in the Paris climate deal a coalition bottom line. They already govern with ACT and NZ First. Labour's new tax would not land on most voters.
• NZ First. Right. Nationalist. They call themselves centrist. This year they sit on the right. They would scrap the Waitangi Tribunal now. They want a vote on Māori seats, and citizens-only voting and Super. They want a public vote on a hard yearly migrant cap and a company-tax cut for smaller firms. They back more mining and oil, including on conservation land except national parks. They would leave the Paris climate deal. They have ruled out Labour.
• ACT. Right. Smaller government. Cut and merge ministries, tougher sentences, weaker methane rules, deport offenders who are not citizens. Finish leftover Treaty claims, then wind up the Waitangi Tribunal. The smallest state of the parties here.

Who would actually pay

Four parties want a new tax. They are not the same tax. Most people would not pay any of them.

• Labour: 28% on the profit when you sell a rental or commercial building, from 1 July 2027. Family home, farm, KiwiSaver, shares, a small business, and inheritances are out.
• Greens: 2.5% on net wealth over $10 million, plus a tax on large inheritances. A small rich group. Not wage earners.
• Opportunity: a yearly tax on the land under houses, farms and shops. That is the broad one. Ordinary owners would feel it.
• Te Pāti Māori: a 5% charge when you buy a house, except a first home under $1 million. Their wealth tax starts at $2 million, wider than the Greens.
• National and ACT: no new tax of that kind. They say Labour would tax households. Hipkins has ruled out a ute tax, a streaming levy, a land tax and an inheritance tax. On 12 October Willis said Labour and its partners have proposed at least nine new taxes, which she put at $2,263 a year for the average household. That is her figure. In September 2026 the ASA ruled a National flyer misleading for saying Labour's capital gains tax would hit KiwiSaver. Labour's plan leaves ordinary KiwiSaver balances out.
• NZ First: no new household tax of that kind. They would cut company tax for smaller firms from 28% to 20% if yearly turnover is under $30 million. They say that costs about $1 billion a year. Most people would not pay a new tax either way.