Willis signals National tax pledges on brackets and R&D ahead of PREFU
Finance Minister Nicola Willis says National will campaign on adjusting income tax brackets to address bracket creep and on changes to the research and development tax credit.
She gave the indication at BusinessNZ's election conference in Wellington on 14 September. The conference opened with a political panel on the economy, according to RNZ.
The panel brought together Willis for National, Barbara Edmonds for Labour, ACT leader David Seymour, New Zealand First's Shane Jones, Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick and TOP's Qiulae Wong. Te Pāti Māori was not represented on the panel.
Willis set out no rates, thresholds or design detail for either proposal. Bracket creep is when pay rises push people into higher tax brackets without a real gain in buying power. The R&D credit is government support that reduces tax for firms doing approved research. On R&D, Willis said a specific announcement would wait until after the pre-election fiscal update on 29 September. That update, known as PREFU, is Treasury's pre-election opening of the books on the economy and government finances.
Edmonds referred during the discussion to Labour's already-announced capital gains tax. Swarbrick said the Greens would act to boost competition, particularly in the energy and supermarket sectors. No new policy detail from those parties was reported from the panel beyond those positions.
The hints come after Budget 2026, which provided $3.8 billion of new spending offset by $1.7 billion in savings, according to RNZ. Separately, Budget 2026 tax legislation includes a donation tax credit threshold of $100,000 with a maximum tax credit entitlement of $33,333.33, according to Inland Revenue's Budget policy summary.
The broader context here is fiscal permission. Holding the R&D announcement until after PREFU ties any tax commitment to Treasury's pre-election numbers rather than to current baselines. It preserves optionality. Ministers can test a line with business without locking in a costed promise before Treasury opens the books. Any bracket adjustment will then need to be read against the operating outlook, the debt track and the Government's existing fiscal strategy.
Looking at what this means for the campaign, the two tracks point in different directions. Bracket indexation speaks to households and to the tax-to-GDP debate. R&D settings speak to firms, commercialisation and productivity. BusinessNZ was a logical venue to float both together. Voters and analysts will want specificity: whether bracket movement means threshold shifts, rate changes or indexation, and whether R&D means rate, eligibility, refundability or administration. None of that was settled on the panel. For Labour and the Greens, the exchange restated known lines. The next move sits with National after 29 September, when PREFU provides the baseline for costing any pledge.
