other votes The Ayes are 56, the Noes are 63. The motion is not
agreed to. I call on
Government Order of the Day No. 2. Thank you.
Taxation (Annual
Employment and Investment Income, and Remedial Matters)
Bill, committee stage. I declare the
House in committee for consideration
of the Taxation (Annual Rates
for
Income, and Remedial Matters) Bill. Madam Chair.
Madam Chair. The House is in committee for
Madam Chair. The House is in committee for consideration
of the Taxation (Annual Rates for
committee for consideration of the
Employment and Investment Income, and Remedial Matters)
Bill. The question is that Part 1 stand part.
question is that Part 1 stand part. I call the Amy Adams. Madam
Chairman, thank you for the call on
Part 1 of the Taxation
(Annual rates, Employment and Investment
Income, and Remedial Matters) Bill.
We've come out of a detailed debate
on the procedural matters of the
bill and now we're
in the committee stage and it is good to
reflect that this is a very good
bill, drafted with a huge amount of work that has
gone into it by my
colleague, the Hon Judith Collins, now picked up by
the Minister in the
chair, the Hon Stuart Nash. On the whole,
the bill picks up a
number of important matters in our tax system and
it is probably worth taking
a moment just to reflect on those because,
as I say, we have just come out of
a specific procedural debate about
one aspect which I'm
sure will be getting a lot of House time
over the course of the next few hours.
But broadly speaking, and I ecosure the
Minister will turn to this in his contributions, these are bills that
are passed on an annual basis, as
the nail
are passed on an annual basis, as
reconfirm the tax rates for the
and going back to my first stint on the Finance and Expenditure
Committee quite a while ago
now, these remedial matter that is
come up from time to time are critically
important for picking up
often small and important but nonetheless
not
our tax laws working well. There is though one other important
aspect of this bill before we turn
to the matters in the Supplementary
Order Papers that
is worth highlighting. This bill is
about some of the critical changes to give
effect to what has been labelled
the
of the IRD. There is a matter that the
of the IRD. There is a matter that
considerable work and money into over a number of years. I'm
pleased to see that it is a matter that
really does transcend the
politics of this House. Actually,
it is my experience that those
matters occur more often than
the public might think because they don't attract
the attention of the gallery. But this
project to transform the
way in which the IRD operates,
to transform the way in which we think about and
collect tax, to transform the
way in which we allow New Zealanders
to understand their tax system and
report on them, and
the ability, for example, for small businesses to
pay their tax on
example, for small businesses to pay
so they don't get into those situations we see often where
they're reaching the ends of the tax
year and haven't accounted
for it properly. So
properly. So that is critically important. Not all that much
use for the Government but that's not
the primary consideration. The primary
consideration
consideration is that taxpayers understand and give effect to those
obligations. The other aspect, not just the
payment of tax by, particularly,
smaller businesses but
also this niggly issue of secondary tax
which I know as an electorate MP
comes up repeatedly in my electorate office
and the concerns and the
frustration that taxpayers have
at what they perceive as a higher rate of tax
on secondary income.
secondary income. Now, I know from having signed out
any number of
letters back to constituents and meeting with
them that while the tax rate isn't
any higher when it all comes out
in the wash, the net effect is quite
considerable on them in terms of
their cash flow on an
ongoing basis. So the ability to move to
a system where tax can be paid in
a much more clear
where tax can be paid in a much more
incredibly important. The frustration that I'm sure
is shared across governments and through
the IRD itself is the massive
task of building the
building the ICT capability to deliver that. It is not a
secret to say that many
occasions when changes to tax policy or the delivery of tax
services were looked at, it
was actually, in fact, the inability
of the machinery behind our
tax system to cope with it that
actually prevented some of those
changes being given effect to. So the
business transformation programme
represents a significant investment
in ICT and in
computer technology, certainly, but also the way in which
we actually think about
and deliver taxation services. I did want to
spend a little bit
of time reflecting on that because that is
at the heart of what
this bill does. You will hear a lot of discussion
from this side of the
House over the course of this debate around the two
SOPs that the Minister has tabled.
SOPs that the Minister has tabled. Let
Let me set out at the outset the National Party position for you
in this legislation on the SOPs.
The core legislation in front of us as
returned from select committee, we
would, on the face of it,
be happy to continue to support it, it is a
good bill. It is a bill that,
as I say, was started under our
Government. While there'll be
questions for the Minister to answer
about some of the
changes contained within it, it's a bill
that we're broadly supportive of. The
Minister's SOP no. 16 I regard
as largely
largely a technical Supplementary Order Paper
Order Paper and, again, while there'll be questions for the
Minister to answer in respect of
that, we are
broadly supportive. The second, though, of
the Supplementary Order Papers that
cuts across a number of the parts of this
bill is... I do have to
remind the member that the SOPs come up in
Part 2... Thank you. Just setting
out the position of National in
this debate as a contextual matter, is one
of course where
course where we're strongly in opposition and we'll be raising
those matters as we
proceed through the legislation. So,
Madam Chair, by way of introductory comments an
setting out the view
setting out the view of the National Party on this legislation,
it is a very good bill. It came back from
the select committee as a
very good bill. But we are deeply concerned
that with the changes that may be
made with the committee
of the house whole stock exchange it may turn
into a bill that we cannot
support. It will be important that the
Minister address a
number of the questions we have in
relation to concerns we have for
this legislation and we look forward
to him doing that. Greg O'Connor. I
rise to speak on
him doing that. Greg O'Connor. I rise to speak on Part 1
of this scan
tax. Tax, is like the certainty of death. I take this