Webb DuncanDr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you very much Madam Chair and I must say the introduction to tax legislation on the Finance and Expenditure Committee has been a surprising pleasure of my time in Parliament. It was I must say interesting to sit on that select committee and just understand some of the tensions in tax law and the real need to balance the department's demands for efficiency against the public's need for workability and simplicity. I must say the select committee received some very good advice that was really well-balanced and as we go through this Part 3 of the bill it has some technical aspects but in fact really what it's about is assisting the IRD with its Business Transformation project and ensuring that they have information which is timely and accurate so that the tax is paid as accurately and as timely as possible in a way that's most likely to be paid.Having said that it's clear that in some cases that provision of information is an undue burden and it's quite right that we identify where the costs whether they be costs in time or money are balanced against the usefulness of that information on time. So we look for example at the reporting of tax information on paper or via the internet on myIR the internet platform and the fact that for some people using myIR simply isn't feasible. In those kinds of situations the reporting at regular intervals on payday is really not appropriate because it simply takes too much time it's too cumbersome and it's much easier in fact to do it after the event. So at select committee that was one of the important changes which were introduced. Similarly and perhaps more technically employers with shadow payrolls—overseas employers who in fact are employing New Zealanders—indeed were not required to do reporting on a payroll basis. So there's another example.Also the transition the payroll subsidy—the idea that payroll agents who provide that information are able to be subsidised. It's only a few cents per employee but nevertheless it's some millions of dollars that the revenue forgoes—the idea that that be not taken away immediately but that it be reduced over time because some of those small employers are going to have to learn how to put those returns in in a timely basis. So firstly that threshold is going to be lowered down to $50000 rather than $500000 in terms of PAYE and the time for implementation is being pushed out ultimately to 2020. But having said that this is part of the transformation project; I do think it's really important in this transformation project that we don't leave behind those people who still struggle with electronic filing and so on. We've got to have a tax system which accommodates everyone.This part of the bill also deals with resident withholding tax and tax on dividends and interest income. One of the important changes is in fact the increase of the non-declaration rate to what is essentially in our tax framework a penal rate of 45 percent. That's to make sure that people actually do give their banks or the companies who are paying them dividends their IRD number so that that matching process can go on and we can follow people's overall income. So that's an important move as well.The other area in respect of resident withholding tax was the requirement of payers of interest and dividends to report. Now this is a pretty well-known requirement. We know that our banks report to the IRD. But in fact what became clear was that there were numerous transactions where interest would be paid perhaps through family loans or other modest arrangements where the tax would be only a few hundreds or perhaps thousands of dollars. In fact the liability for that along with the cost and in fact the fact that the person receiving or paying that income may not even know that it was captured by the Income Tax Act meant that it was entirely inappropriate. So a threshold of $5000 for investment income was placed on that. So it's not required to declare or to provide that information to the revenue.So overall obviously this is a bill which is intended to improve the Income Tax Act. It's really an administrative bill to make it work better but it's good to see that through that select committee process we've managed to soften the hard edges of it make it more workable and this certainly will improve this piece of legislation. Thank you Madam Chair.