Adams Amy: Taxation (Tax Administration and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second Reading 
Adams Amy: Taxation (Tax Administration and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:674;Page:20099] 
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 I am very happy to take a call this evening on the second reading of the Taxation (Tax Administration and Remedial Matters) Bill. 
Before I talk about gift duty which obviously is one of the key elements of this bill I will touch on the other major aspect which is the changes being made around information sharing and secrecy. That is certainly an area that the Finance and Expenditure Committee spent quite a bit of time considering. Certainly we concur with the Minister of Revenue that there is a need for the Inland Revenue Department to share its information more efficiently and easily with other agencies but of course we were very concerned to ensure that that is done in a proper and carefully controlled way. I think the balance that we have reached within the legislation as it is before the House is good and robust. One of the components we have built into the bill is a reporting back to the House on how that information sharing works so that this House can continue to monitor the way in which those new powers are set out. 
I will touch briefly on gift duty and in particular respond to some of the comments of the speaker who has just resumed his seat Stuart Nash. The contentions Labour Party members are putting up in relation to this aspect really reflect more than anything their lack of understanding about how this area of law works. The reality is that trusts already exist people can already put their assets into trusts and they can already avoid tax. Tax avoidance is a serious issue but the abolition of gift duty will not make any significant difference. 
The member referred to the concerns of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and the Law Society being on record but it is worth pointing out that the beneficiaries of the $70 million of compliance costs that this outdated and useless regime imposes are the lawyers and the accountants. It is lawyers and accountants who get to charge that $70 million in compliance costs to their clients every year to comply with a system—and let us be very clear about this—that generates less than $1 million but costs nearly half a million dollars a year to run. So we have a tax that is generating almost nothing and on which there is almost zero enforcement. 
If we ask the Inland Revenue Department for records of gift statements for a transaction going back the department can barely give us that information. There is no follow-up. This is not a highly enforced tax and 99.6 percent of all transactions that go through the department are time-wasting for everyone involved because there is no duty payable. 
This tax has long since run its course. The costs imposed on the private sector—with the beneficiaries of those costs being the sector’s lawyers and accountants—are unnecessary. They are not serving any public good. They are not in fact protecting the beneficiaries that Labour claims they are protecting and it is time this outdated duty was abolished. It is long overdue and I am very pleased to commend the bill to the House.