Over the weekend, there was an anniversary that I’m picking most people didn’t know about and certainly didn’t celebrate.

On Saturday, GST turned 36.

For 36 years, we’ve been paying that little bit extra on pretty much everything we buy. It started off as 10 percent extra when Roger Douglas kicked it off on the 1st of October 1986, and there’ve been increases along the way to get us to the 15 percent we pay now.

And it’s probably coincidental that GST is in the news today. This time it’s GST on the Government’s new unemployment insurance scheme.

I heard a tax expert on Newstalk ZB this morning and, after a while, my eyes started glazing over because tax experts being tax experts, they do get bogged down in the detail pretty quickly, don’t they?

But the gist, so to speak, of what he was talking about, is the advice from Treasury to the Government that it shouldn’t go giving us taxpayers any deduction on the GST that we will pay as part of our compulsory payments into the new unemployment insurance scheme.

You probably know about it - it’s where workers will pay into it and employers will pay into it too. And, once it’s up and running, if you lose your job through redundancy the Government will pay you 80 percent of what you were earning for up to seven months.

And, just like what happens with ACC, employees will have money deducted from their pay for the scheme and employers will have to pay into it as well through levies.

But, unlike employers who will be able to claim back the GST they pay into the insurance scheme, their workers won’t. And I think this is wrong.

If you go to the IRD website, here’s what it says about GST: “GST is a tax added to the price of most goods and services, including imports. It is a tax for people who buy and sell goods and services.”

A tax for people who buy and sell goods and services. But it's the buying bit that’s key here.

Because, generally, when you buy something you choose whether you’re going to do it or not, don’t you?

Even stuff you absolutely need, there’s still an element of choice there. If something breaks down, you can choose whether you’re going to get it fixed or not.

Food - we all need food. But there are a whole lot of choices available to us. We don’t have to buy everything - we can grow vegetables, if we choose to.

Life insurance and medical insurance - we’ve got a choice.

What we don’t get to choose, though, is whether we’re going to contribute to the Government’s new unemployment insurance scheme. It’s going to be compulsory, whether we like it or not.

And that’s why I don’t agree with Treasury and that’s why I don’t think we should be made to pay GST on the levies that are going to go straight out of our pay packets whether we like it or not.

The National Party also thinks that adding GST to the levies is outrageous.

Its Finance spokesperson Nicola Willis is describing it as “yet another grab on Kiwis’ take-home pay by Labour, intended to boost the Government’s coffers at the expense of workers.

And she goes on to say: “In the middle of a cost of living crisis, this is completely the wrong thing for the Government to be doing.”

And I couldn’t agree more.

Although, I’m coming at it from the perspective that this is not going to be optional - there’s no choice involved here - and so why should we be paying GST?

Because, as far as I’m concerned, buying something comes from a conscious decision to pay money in exchange for it. That’s why I’ve got no qualms about paying GST on my groceries and clothes and shoes and holidays…all things that I choose to spend my money on.

But when this new insurance scheme comes in, I’ll have no choice. I’ll be paying for the scheme - but I won’t be buying it. That’s why I think there is no way we should be paying GST on it.

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