Labour needs to move faster to reimburse over half of the Kiwis who were wrongly taxed when they should have received a rebate under the Clean Car Discount Scheme, National’s Transport Spokesperson Simeon Brown says.

“Kiwis are picking up the tab for Labour’s Car Tax mistakes. We’re in a cost of living crisis and Kiwis are tightening their budgets every week. Those who were wrongly taxed won’t have been expecting to be out of pocket by thousands of dollars after purchasing their car.

“While we welcome Transport Minister Michael Wood’s commitment today to reimburse affected Kiwis in a timely manner, the Government is not moving fast enough on this.

“Last week, NZTA said it knew about two mistakes. By Saturday, it was 96. And now the Minister says he knows about 115 mistakes, with only 57 resolved so far. But there are likely others who have been incorrectly charged who are yet to come forward.

“The Minister says that overall he is ‘very satisfied’ and that these are just ‘bedding in issues’, but that will be little comfort to the Kiwis who bought a car in good faith thinking they were going to get a rebate and were then slapped with a tax of thousands of dollars.

“The purchasers of some hybrids who should have been getting a rebate of $3450 were required to pay a fee of $3000 to register the vehicle by NZTA. Other vehicles were showing a fee of $2875 when they deserve a rebate of $1600 or $2500.

“Labour is so incompetent that they can’t even organise a tax properly – you’d think they’d have figured it out by now, given how many new taxes they’ve imposed since they came into government.

“The Government needs to urgently reimburse these Kiwis like they promised, today. And then they need to quickly fix the data in the motor vehicle registry before more Kiwis are ripped off by the Car Tax.”