Adams AmyIn CommitteePart 1 Income TaxHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): I'm happy to be taking this first call in what I know will be a detailed and comprehensive committee stage on the legislation that we have before us. While we have been debating this matter this afternoon this bill of course hasn't had the opportunity to go to a select committee. There are in Part 1 a number of the most important and substantial changes in this piece of legislation so there will be a number of contributions that the members on this side of the committee will be wanting to take as we work our way through the detail of some of those changes.In starting it and given that Part 1 does contain the changes to the tax package that National had put in place in the 2017 Budget and clause 46 in Part 1 of course repeals those changes it's only right I think to point out to Kiritapu Allan—who spoke last in the second reading which has just been completed—that it isn't in fact a $1000 a week tax cut that is being cancelled; it is of course $1000 a year. Now the difference may not be substantial to that side of the committee but actually for New Zealand workers $1060 a year is what the Government was going to let them keep of their own money. This isn't Government money. This isn't public money. This is the money of those workers and when National was in Government the decision had been made that actually the economy was running well the Government was running well and we could afford to let hard-working New Zealanders keep more of their money.That $1060 of tax cuts was well-supported in this House. It was supported by every party in this House except for the Labour Party. What you've got of course in this bill is the cancelling of that legal entitlement that taxpayers currently have to keep more of their money. It isn't simply about returning surpluses; it's also very importantly about reflecting the real cost of those tax thresholds that are being debated because the way the tax cuts were being delivered was not simply a reduction but adjusting the thresholds at which the graduated levels of our tax system applied. In doing that it is important that this committee is mindful of the fact that over the period of time the real buying power of the average wage of course decreases but the average wage itself increases.If you want to maintain the relative parity between the taxpayers in New Zealand and the income earners in New Zealand and the respective tax rates that they should be subject to you have to periodically ensure that those tax brackets are adjusted. The brackets that were focused on which this bill is now seen to repeal in Part 1 were the lowest brackets in the tax system. They were the tax brackets in which the entire income of people on low to middle incomes are paying. So this bill undoes tax cuts that were exactly designed to ensure that the lowest paid in our economy got to keep more of their money. That is something that this side of the committee feels passionately about. I know that other speakers will want to spend some more time on that.One of the other matters that I wanted to touch on in this first contribution is the strange reinstatement of a little known—and in a moment I will talk about why it's little known or how little known it is—part of the tax system which is called the independent earner tax credit. The independent earner tax credit is one of those strange little parts of the system that effectively says well if you are a single person without children if you're a married couple that doesn't have children or you have older children—at one point in the system where there was a lot of focus on especially supporting our families with children actually there was a desire to want to give a little bit back to those earners as well.It is the part of the system or it used to be the part of the system that really supported those childless earners. The amount of that independent earner tax credit is $10 a week. It isn't a huge amount of money. Over the course of a year even my grasp of maths tells me that that's $520 a year.Hon Grant Robertson: I can confirm that.Hon AMY ADAMS: I'm pleased to get the confirmation from the Minister of Finance. I'm touched and honoured that the Minister has confirmed my maths. So $520 a year. But let's think about this it this way. If the taxpayers listening at home the workers watching this debate at nearly 10 o'clock on a Thursday night or those who are following this with interest—and actually when you're talking about people's own money and how much of it a Government helps itself to I think people do care. When they're following this debate what they need to understand is that while this bill will give independent earners who don't have children $10 a week—[Time expired]