Uffindell Sam; Parker DavidSAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm just rising to talk on the addition of GST to the electronic market place for the supply of goods and services. Now I know that and I do—and I assume a few people in this House do and I know the good folks back home in the electorate of Tauranga certainly do when they're sitting around on a Saturday night and they want to get home they'll be opening up their phones and getting an Uber and then probably getting home and quite likely also ordering up some Uber Eats. We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis but the feedback that we have been hearing from this is that the additional GST on these goods is going to most likely be passed on to the consumer.So I'd like to ask the Minister: has he heard anything to the contrary around that and if he has why are they still proceeding with it given that it is likely to be inflationary? And we do have a lot of food inflation as well I know and I see a few folks round here do like to try and beat that—beat the fresh fruit and vege rises that we're having at the moment—and order their Uber Eats online or maybe it's just a way of balancing the nutrition in their diet.The other part of that that I'd like to explore with the Minister is around why this is being applied inconsistently with how GST is applied where the current regime allows sellers of goods and services to earn up to $60000 before GST is applied to them and what advice the Minister sought and obtained around why it was necessary to extend it without a threshold to suppliers in the electronic market place. Thanks.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Thank you for those questions. Indeed the taxation of transport and accommodation services booked through online platforms is the most important part of this part of the bill and I'm happy to address that. In New Zealand GST applies to almost all goods and services—the exclusions are interest and rent; those are the main ones—and our system is meant to be consistent across both different sorts of expenditure within the economy and different methods of delivery and the rules need to keep up to date with changes in technology. It was for that reason that the last National-ACT Government introduced GST on apps that were purchased through the likes of the Apple Store in order to protect the tax base. The OECD has gone further. We take advice on these matters from the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development; they said that Governments around the world need to adjust their tax policies to make sure you can't create what is effectively a legal fiction that because you're booking your accommodation through an online app that notionally has that contract based in overseas jurisdiction even though the service is paid for in New Zealand by a New Zealander to a New Zealander we thought that that hole in the GST system should be plugged. Indeed the member would be interested to hear that on 1 September 2022 his finance spokesperson Nicola Willis said It's about fairness ensuring motels are treated the same as Airbnb and that Ubers are treated the same as taxis." and she was right. So I'm happy to quote her. The reason why this is favoured by not just the Labour Party and various other parties that are in this Parliament but by Hospitality New Zealand and the Taxi Federation is that they know that it is unfair that they could be undercut by people on the basis of GST in these circumstances.In terms of the GST members have quoted perhaps an unfortunate paragraph in the regulatory impact statement (RIS) for the bill that suggested that at the extreme 15c extra GST could be passed on by the providers of these services; in fact that's not correct. It was pretty loose language in the RIS because people get a credit for the notional GST input expenses that they would claim if they were filing their own GST and that's 8.5c of the 15c GST that would be charged. So the maximum extra impost in respect of those people would be 6.5 percent and of course many of their competitors are already paying GST in full on their competitive services. So the effect on prices will be even less than that."