Williamson Maurice: Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliamson Maurice: Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16530. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister of Customs):Again I am going to try to be very brief and cover a couple of issues that the member Rino Tirikatene just raised about GST. But first of all I will just go back and say to members that I think I have answered as fully as I am prepared to as part of the details of this legislation the Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill about the implementation of the Joint Border Management System. I am actually pleased with where it has got to so far I am pleased with the defects management I am pleased with the functionality we have got now.I know that we have slipped by a month or 2 months in the implementation of a couple of modules but in a project of this size that is something that is absolutely standard. Name any of the biggest commercial companies out there in the world that implement computer systems of this magnitude that do not see that happen. So this is not nuclear meltdown and this is not the end of the world. We are actually getting a damn good system to the users out there. But we have some shadowy name in a bush—and we cannot even get from the Opposition who it is—saying “I’ve heard that …”. I do not know whether the Opposition has got some Government Communications Security Bureau implant or something out there but I actually say that I do not respond to “I’ve heard from someone that….”. I am actually quite pleased with it.I will now talk about the GST issue and the threshold. This is probably going to be one of the most taxing issues—and I use those words guardedly—that this Parliament and this nation will always have to deal with. It is not as simple as the member makes out—that you just go to your form when you are buying goods and you click it. First of all you are buying from overseas websites. They are not going to have New Zealand GST if you are buying from Amazon for example. They are not going to say: “Oh you’re a New Zealander.”Dr David Clark: Why not?Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Well because I do not think that international websites will give a damn about what New Zealanders are buying or not with regard to this. Secondly sometimes people’s credit cards are used while they are overseas so you cannot actually put the charge on to the credit card. If you happen to be in London and buy something and then get back to New Zealand you do not want to see that there is GST on it because you were actually there as opposed to buying it online.I am not saying to this Committee that there are not answers. What I am saying to the Committee is that they are very complicated issues that are going to tax us for some time with regard to the digital economy and the whole way in which people pay for things as bitcoin and its equivalents start to become the way of the future. All that this legislation is doing is allowing the Government to set whatever that de minimis threshold may be into the future. I can tell the member that there is a long way to go before there are any decisions about what that regime may look like—or if it is possible at all. I will repeat that: if it is possible at all because you may actually set up an account overseas with an offshore bank transfer your money into that account and then buy off that credit card and still not have any transactions out of a New Zealand bank account showing it.So I warn all members who think that this is simple. I know that the Minister of Revenue and the Minister of Finance would love to clip that GST ticket simplistically but the reason for the de minimis threshold is to say to ordinary New Zealanders that if they are bringing in something of a modest sum we do not want them to have to go out to DHL at the airport and pay $3.50 GST and $4.60 customs duty. So the reason for having that de minimis amount is to say that if it is below a certain amount we will let you off it altogether. All this legislation is doing—which is what we really should be concentrating on—is allowing those systems to set those targets in the future.