This just in: wealthy avoid paying tax

A charming error in this morning’s Dominion Post, in its
coverage of a report by a tax working group:

Finance Minister Bill English said some of the
information dug up by the group on how high-
income earners were dodging tax was startling.
That only half of New Zealand’s wealthiest
individuals were able to avoid paying the top
rate of tax would be ‘astounding to the layman,’
he said.

Only half? Sure is astounding. All of us ‘laymen’ have
been convinced for years that the whole lot of them
at the top of the money heap have been practising tax
avoidance.

An error of my own, to correct, though: the Clark Labour
government didn't appoint Jim Bolger ambassador to the
United States—its predecessor, the Shipley National
government, did. But Labour did make Bolger chairman
of Kiwibank and KiwiRail.