Fenton Darien: Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFenton Darien: Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 27 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18334. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour): It is a pleasure to take a call in the second reading of the Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill. In listening to the debate about this bill one of the things that you hear about so often in this House is the difference of treatment where one set of rules for one set of people is completely different to another. It usually is to do with how much power you have either as a worker or as a taxpayer. The disappointing thing in looking at this bill in the first instance is that it not only changes a whole lot of rules that have been implemented under the former Minister of Revenue Peter Dunne such as the tax on plain-clothes workers and the accommodation tax on earthquake rebuild workers but it does nothing to address the issue of tax avoidance in this country.Last year the Inland Revenue Department found that 107 out of 161 high-wealth individuals who own or control more than $50 million worth of assets declared that their personal income in the last financial year was less than $70000. The starting point for the top tax bracket is 33c in the dollar. That is just disgraceful. These multimillionaires use a variety of 6800 tax-planning devices such as companies trusts and overseas bank accounts to avoid paying tax. One had a network of 197 entities. Although this bill is important and I do believe that the Finance and Expenditure Committee has done a good job on tidying it up it is disappointing to see that once again we have a tax bill in this House that does nothing—nothing—to address the biggest gap we have in our tax system which is tax avoidance from those who are already very well off and who do not need to be avoiding tax. In fact they should be paying their fair share. That is what tax is about. It is about people paying their fair share. So we support this bill because we support a fair tax system and we support tidying up rules that have been messy and confusing for people—not only employers but also employees.I do note the comment in the Labour minority report though about the rushed process. Once again I am sorry to have to repeat myself because I seem to say this quite a lot in the House but this is a very complex bill which has pages and pages of addenda to it. The process through the select committee was over the Christmas period which made it very difficult to address the issues. I again congratulate the select committee members who worked hard to get that done but I also congratulate the submitters who had to gather their thoughts and interrupt their Christmas and New Year to help the Government out because somehow somewhere along the way the process was mucked up.I wanted to also talk about some of the employee entitlements. Jami-Lee Ross said—well he was referring to Andrew Little I think when he talked about muckraking. I mean the member cannot help himself if he forgets. He has got such a stressful life. He does forget people’s names from time to time. It is not muckraking to talk about the differences in treatment of one piece of legislation and another. I cannot help but be struck by the fact that although this piece of legislation deals with tax breaks on mayoral entitlements we have another piece of legislation in this House that actually plans to reduce the rights to meals and rest breaks of every other worker in the country.Similarly with the accommodation treatment there is a range of situations that have been described. The select committee has extended that. It applies to mobile workers and others but then there are farmers and migrant workers working on farms. I particularly want to mention the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme. The Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme was started by Labour. We depended on those migrant workers to come here and work to pick our fruit. But it was this Government that actually reduced the accommodation allowance for those workers. It used to be the minimum wage plus the accommodation allowance; it is now the minimum wage including the accommodation allowance. What about them? Then there are the clothing allowances. I had a call from someone who talked about how he works in the snow for a car rental company how he has to wash cars outside in the pouring rain and how he gets no clothing allowance and no clothing entitlement. It is not fair. I would like to see some balance in future legislation.