Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to be talking on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2018-19 Modernising Tax Administration and Remedial Matters) Bill. I'm going to start out with the good stuff that's in this bill—and I think there is some good stuff.First of all I want to just reflect on the KiwiSaver changes. It's interesting; there was a report that's just come out earlier today saying that many young people do not understand how KiwiSaver works. Of course if we are to provide an environment where New Zealanders do save for and look forward to and plan for their retirement then it's absolutely essential that they do have a very clear understanding of KiwiSaver even though we've got the New Zealand superannuation scheme in place and I think some of the changes in this bill will go a long way towards addressing some of those issues with KiwiSaver.In particular there are five key changes—and I've got to say these all reflect basically the report that the Retirement Commissioner prepared in 2016. The first one is that it removes what's called the five-year lock-in period" which is something we agree with because for those people who start putting money into their KiwiSaver from 60 to 65 they have a five-year lock-in period; so if they retire at 65 in some cases they cannot actually access their KiwiSaver savings account until later on.The second one is that we think it's a good thing that older New Zealanders who may not have invested in a funds-management approach to their retirement can actually put their money into KiwiSaver after the age of 65. I had one particular constituent who came to me on this matter some time ago and suggested this because by doing so it's a way for older New Zealanders to use a proven method and funds-management approach to look after their funds in retirement.The third one is around increasing the number of contribution rates. At the moment we've got a slightly weird situation where you can introduce funds into your KiwiSaver account only at 4 percent 8 percent or in fact I think it goes to 12 as well. What this bill proposes to do is give greater flexibility by adding 6 and 10 percent as rates that the Kiwi person can recommend they want to contribute to their KiwiSaver account and it therefore gives more flexibility. What we hear from many people—and what we have heard from many people—is that the jump from 4 to 8 percent is too high and therefore the 6 percent in particular is a very useful start.The fourth element is reducing the holiday period from five years to one year. Of course the way that operates is that when people get into financial difficulty or their financial circumstances change what they can do is actually decide to opt out of their KiwiSaver contributions. At the moment it's set at five years. What this bill will do is give better flexibility and require that opt-out to take place every year because what we do want is New Zealanders to actively think about that opt-out clause every year so that if they can they actually get back on to the saving regime and continue to contribute to their KiwiSaver.The last thing they've done in the bill is change the term—and I think it's a good thing—from "contributions holiday" to "savings suspension". It adds a bit of nuance around the wording but I think it's useful in terms of making it clear that if you are going to take a holiday in a sense what you are doing is deferring your savings from that period onwards—and that's why we want the annual review.Also there are some changes in it around business packages clarifying IRD's ability to provide taxpayers who are not tax agents with an ability to get access and lodge PAYE returns and GST returns. At the moment to be registered as a taxation agent you have to go through a process. What this does is give the commissioner more flexibility around that. Also in terms of determinations there's always the point where the commissioner can make a determination but the bill provides a bit of flexibility in terms of the interpretation of the legislation.Then the third main element is around personal tax changes which are good in the sense that they remove the need for people to provide a tax return and also make the ability to get an automatic tax refund much more easily. The IRD can effectively look at your historical financial information and anticipate what tax code you're going to have and all those are good things in terms of getting money out of the IRD and back to taxpayers on a much quicker basis.But it is a sad sad day because what this bill does do is lock in the tax changes that the coalition Government wants to bring in under the so-called Families Package. The issue around the taxation package is that it's good if you have a young family and you're a lower-income family—and the family tax package deals with that in the Budget changes that the coalition Government proposed—but the issue is that if you are a student trying to save and earn money so you don't have to take on a student loan—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Don't bring me into it.ANDREW BAYLY: —the student will still pay a high level of tax on the minimum amount of money that they can make to be able to save for their studies. If you're a young family—a husband and wife or partners—without children then the Families Package provides absolutely no benefit to you at all. Or if you're a superannuitant you in the first year will only receive a portion of the so-called $400 or $700 winter energy payment because in the first year that is a considerably lower sum—it's closer to about $340 because of the way it's been introduced. On top of that what's happened as we're all aware is that the coalition Government has now brought in a host of new tax revenue since election day last year.On the current basis $2.3 billion of additional taxes have already been introduced by this coalition Government. They include the fuel tax that we've talked about significantly over the last few weeks in this House both at a local Auckland Council level and also at a Government level. We've talked about the Amazon tax we've talked about the removal of the average income earner tax cut and there's a whole range around some of the business changes. And this is against the backdrop of a Government that is now raking in $73 billion and the tax take from this Government over the foreseeable future will rise to just under $100 billion without any additional tax being proposed. We know that there's a working party beavering away right now trying to drum up new taxes to impose on unsuspecting New Zealanders.The worst thing about this bill is that it locks in the same tax rates that all New Zealanders pay and the technical term is "fiscal creep" which means that with inflation as your income rises you increasingly get pushed into a higher tax bracket even though in real terms you are not better off. That is the travesty of this bill because that means that those average New Zealanders who are out there working hard saving for their future looking after their children and generally trying to get ahead will be locked into higher tax rates than otherwise should be the case.If this coalition Government had put in place the tax changes that the National Government had said they were going to put in on 1 April this year then they would be much much better off and that's what New Zealand should be about: fairer treatment for all not just looking after a certain category of people but ensuring that all New Zealanders share in the wealth of this country and can get ahead. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker."