Everyone's wondering how much tax influencers pay. But here's what nobody's asking: where did 75,000 other non-traditional earners go?

62,751 New Zealanders earned taxable income classified as 'not elsewhere included' in 2024. That's everyone whose income doesn't fit the usual boxes: gig workers, online sellers, casual contractors, side-hustlers, and yes, probably some influencers. (Source: Stats NZ (LEED), taxable-income-sources)

The number has been falling every year since COVID. In 2020, there were 137,394 people in this category. By 2024, more than half had disappeared from the tax rolls.

Some of this is good news. Many of those 2020 earners were people scrambling for income during lockdowns: selling stuff online, doing odd jobs, cobbling together whatever work they could find. As the economy reopened, they found proper jobs. The income shifted to traditional employment categories.

But not all of it. Even compared to 2019, before COVID upended everything, we're down 61%. That's 99,172 fewer people earning income this way than five years ago.

Here's where it gets complicated: these figures aren't adjusted for inflation. New Zealand's experienced roughly 20-25% inflation since 2019. What looks like a dramatic drop in people earning 'other' income is actually even more dramatic when you consider that staying in this category now requires earning more nominal dollars just to break even.

Think about what that means. If you were making $30,000 a year from freelance work or online sales in 2019, you'd need to make $36,000-37,500 today just to have the same purchasing power. Many people earning at the lower end of this category likely gave up because it stopped being worth it.

The influencer tax question matters, but it's a sideshow. The real story is about the gig economy shrinking while everyone assumed it was booming. All those predictions about the 'future of work' being flexible, digital, and portfolio-based? The data says Kiwis are moving in the opposite direction.

They're choosing traditional jobs. Or they're earning so little from side hustles that they're falling below the tax threshold. Or they've stopped trying to monetise their hobbies and skills because inflation ate the margins.

This isn't just about tax collection. It's about economic resilience. When 75,000 people stop earning supplementary income, that's 75,000 households with less of a buffer when costs rise. That's thousands of part-time entrepreneurs who decided it wasn't worth the hassle.

The influencer economy gets the headlines. But the data shows a much bigger shift: New Zealand's non-traditional income earners are quietly disappearing, and nobody's counting the cost.