Beaumont Carol: Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18737. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour):I rise to take a short call. I am speaking on the Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill which is an omnibus bill that deals with the Income Tax Act the Tax Administration Act the Goods and Services Tax Act and the Child Support Act. I was not on the Finance and Expenditure Committee so I am not going to go into the detail of some of the more technical matters—things like the tax treatment of black hole expenditure the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act or even things to do with deregistered charities. But what I will talk about is around employee allowances.First of all can I say that many of the changes in this bill are about tidying up some of the petty rules that had been implemented under the former Minister of Revenue Peter Dunne including things like the tax on plain-clothes police officers and accommodation tax on earthquake rebuild workers. Some of these changes are actually to tidy things up that the Government itself with one of its shonky support partners got wrong. I think it is fair to say that in dealing with tax others—my colleagues Darien Fenton and Dr David Clark—have talked about some of the elements of tax policy.I want to keep some of this simple. One of the groups of people who pay tax in this country who do not ever get to not comply who do not ever get to not pay what they are due to pay is of course wage and salary earners. Wage and salary earners low and middle income New Zealanders pay their tax. It is taken out before they receive their pay. They pay their tax. They pay their share. In fact as my colleague Darien Fenton said under this Government they ended up paying more GST which again they cannot avoid. When they buy their food and when they buy the basic things that they need day to day they pay their tax. They cannot avoid it unlike the multimillionaires who avoid tax; those whom Dr Clark talked about who in fact have massive assets and yet supposedly have incomes of less than $70000 a year. This is just ridiculous. The fact of the matter is that you know people who control more than $50 million worth of assets have personal income of less than $70000 so they do not pay tax. And then of course there are all of the other devices that those at the top use to avoid paying tax—things like company structures trusts and overseas bank accounts.Why is that not something that the Government deals with in its tax reform? Why is it that there is plenty of scrutiny on beneficiaries and beneficiary fraud—and none of us would support people ripping off the system—but the same scrutiny is not put on those at the top? Those who have benefited significantly from the actions of this Government those who got massive tax cuts while low and middle income New Zealanders actually had to pay more tax—why is it that there is not a focus on those people at the top who got the big tax cuts and many of whom are ripping off the system unlike ordinary New Zealanders being paid wages and salaries buying items with GST and using all of their income in fact to survive?I regularly visit budget services. I just want to say to people like Bill English who say that inequality is not getting worse in this country—Bill English says it is not getting worse—well you tell that to the budget services. They can tell you how many more people they are seeing whom they would call the working poor. Forty percent of the people they see are actually in work and cannot make ends meet. They are the people who have been harmed by the tax policies of this Government. They are the people who have been harmed by the fact that this Government has no plans for our economy to strengthen our economy and to provide decent jobs that pay wages that people can actually live on. These are some of the structural challenges that we should be dealing with but the Government just sits on its hands—business as usual looking after its mates—and has no ideas. David Clark did a very good job of outlining the comprehensive and positive plans that Labour has to change those structural problems in our economy and have a brighter and more positive future.