Genter Julie Anne: Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 27 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18335. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I rise to take a short call on behalf of the Green Party on the Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill. I will speak about two things in this bill that we have grave concerns about and they are the primary reasons why we will not be supporting this bill.I have to start by correcting one of the previous speakers National Party member Simon O’Connor who said earlier that the Green Party was proposing a green bank that would involve subsidies to cleantech andgreentech. I think that Mr O’Connor is unclear on our actual policy because the Green Investment Bank—which the Green Party proposed and of course similar sorts of banks are operating successfully in many other jurisdictions—would be entirely on commercial terms. It would be a for-profit bank which would also help sustainable businesses to have access to capital by filling a niche in that area of lack. So I think that Mr O’Connor was mistaken.Of course that is the sort of smart green idea that we need unlike what is happening in this bill which is that the National Government is extending tax breaks for oil companies to come here and explore for oil. In 2014 that is the last thing that we should be giving companies tax breaks for because the world simply cannot afford to burn all of the fossil fuel reserves that oil companies already have on their books. We have got more coal and more oil that have already been found than we can afford to burn and still have a stable climate. So it seems strange that the Government will be encouraging and facilitating more fossil fuel exploration in New Zealand when in fact it is exactly the right time to be incentivising smart green technology which is going to enable our children and grandchildren to be prosperous for many decades to come.The other concern we have with this bill of course is the provision around the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act—that is the foreign account information-sharing agreement. I am a US citizen myself—I am a dual citizen—and there are about 70000 New Zealanders who have US citizenship and we are in a very strange situation where the United States is one of the only countries in the world to tax on the basis of citizenship rather than on the basis of residency. New Zealand citizens who live overseas do not have a requirement to file taxes here in New Zealand but Unites States citizens even people who were born in the United States and never lived there their entire lives but happen to hold citizenship may not be aware that they have this legal requirement. What the United States is doing is exercising its economic power and acting unilaterally to force other countries to comply with new laws that it has around disclosure of foreign bank accounts.The Green Party is very much in favour of global moves to ensure transparency and the exchange of information for the purposes of tax. We want to see a crackdown on tax avoidance globally. That is a good thing. But unfortunately what is happening here isthat the United States is acting on its own and it is going out and forcing other countries to comply with its laws. It is not really being a team player.The OECD has this global forum which we in New Zealand and 121 other countries have been party to and that seems to us the appropriate way to go about information sharing because all the countries are cooperating together rather than just the United States forcing New Zealand and many other countries to provide information on people living in New Zealand who legally own bank accounts.It is interesting also I note that one of the members who spoke previously Mr O’Connor said something like “All tax legislation is reducing compliance costs and increasing efficiency.” In this particular case I am pretty sure it is going to be increasing compliance costs because our Inland Revenue Department is going to have to suddenly collect all this additional information on whether citizens or residents of New Zealand are citizens of the United States and all of the banks here in the New Zealand are going to have to do the same. If anything I think this is going to increase some compliance costs.We do have some concerns about privacy: the privacy of New Zealand residents and citizens who are living here having their information shared with the United States Internal Revenue Service and the fact that this is not really an agreement where we can be certain that New Zealand is getting anything in return for complying with the United States simply going around wielding its weight. But that seems pretty typical of this National Government. The US says “Jump.” and John Key says “How high?”.