Nash StuartHon STUART NASH (Minister of Revenue): Thank you so much Madam Chair. One thing I would like to say to Mr Bayly is Nash has paid back the cash." What I would say to the member is in Opposition he may well remember that I used to query the Inland Revenue every single year as to why they held $750 million in account that was actually owed to Kiwis. This was money that Kiwis hadn't claimed in overpaid tax. And now due to the changes made in Business Transformation we are actually paying that cash back to Kiwis without them having to proactively contact the IRD or an intermediary themselves. So that money—$750 million—the vast majority of that is being paid back to Kiwis. So I think if you look at a lot of mischief in Inland Revenue—and you know I will talk about the former Minister's contribution in a second—we have actually got on top of this. Let's put this into perspective—and one thing I will say is I do have a little bit of sympathy for where the member is coming from but let's put this into perspective—it's my understanding that people who have overpaid have overpaid about a dollar a week. Now it's still a dollar a week they have overpaid but it's about a dollar a week. It's not as if they have overpaid tax that's in the hundreds or the thousands of dollars. It's a dollar a week. The other thing I would say and I remember when the member mentioned this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)—I thought about this and I went back and I had a look at my KiwiSaver statement that had been sent to me by my provider. I would say that I think actually a lot of KiwiSaver providers who by and large use portfolio investment entities (PIEs) to invest their clients' moneys could have taken a little bit more responsibility for this. Why we have ended up in this situation is because there is a default rate that tax is paid if a taxpayer does not provide their correct tax rate. It was impossible for Inland Revenue to determine if the default rate was in fact the default or if in fact that tax rate had been provided by the taxpayer themselves. So they could not separate the default rate from a taxpayer who'd actually been proactive. But I actually believe that KiwiSaver providers who are by and large—not all but by and large—making fees out of their clients could have been a lot more proactive in saying to their clients "Make sure you are on the right tax rate because if you are not you are overpaying tax and you cannot claim this back." Keeping in mind this is not something that has just come into being. This has always been the case ever since PIEs have been set up. The rules have been that if you overpay your tax you will not be able to get this back. This is not something new. It has always been in place. The other thing I will say is the SOP put up by Mr Bayly would require taxpayers to contact IRD proactively because IRD does not have the data themselves to proactively do this and contact taxpayers themselves. This would have to be done proactively.The other thing I would say—and the former member of Revenue does know this—Hon Judith Collins: Minister.Hon STUART NASH: —sorry; the former Minister of Revenue does know this—is that every now and again the commissioner has to make a captain's call about the best use of resource for her men and women. I know that the commissioner has appeared before the Finance and Expenditure Committee and explained in quite quite graphic detail around why she made the call that this was going to be the way forward. Part of that was that this would take significant resource and a whole lot of time and effort because they don't hold the data. They would have to go back significantly. So what we have done is we have fixed the problem. We have fixed the problem. People will pay the right amount of tax going forward but looking back it is just far too much work to be done. That is a call made by the Commissioner of Inland Revenue and I trust that she has a much better oversight of resource allocation and cost benefit analysis than we do and I trust the commissioner has made the right call here. I back her 100 percent. I hope that has answered all the members' questions. Thank you very much."