Pugh Maureen; Russell Deborah; McLellan Tracey; Watts SimonPart 4 Income Tax Act 2007 amendments commencing 1 April 2025 CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members we now come to the debate on Part 4. Part 4 is the debate on clauses 33 to 39 Income Tax Act 2007 amendments commencing 1 April 2025". The question is that Part 4 stand part.Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): If we thought that the last part of the bill was exciting this is even more exciting in this part. Ha ha! I had hoped the Minister would be especially excited about it that he would stand up to explain what this part of the bill is about but he's been in the chair for a long time.These are a whole series of Income Tax Act amendments. And it's quite curious because it says "Income Tax Act 2007 amendments commencing 1 April 2025". We've already had a bit of a discussion way back in Part 1 about the starting date of a lot of the tax threshold changes—31 July. I did have one final question for the Minister on that part and that was whether that was because it's Milton Friedman's birthday on 31 July. But perhaps not. Nevertheless we would have expected that most of the amendments and changes would take place from that date.But here we have this part of the bill that is talking about all the amendments starting from 1 April 2025. So that's a curious question in the first place as to why it would start from 1 April 2025. So just before we really get going on this part I'm going to invite the Minister I guess—I hope he'll explain exactly why we've got these ones starting on 1 April 2025. Can someone jump up?Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you my colleague the Hon Dr Deborah Russell who I know is very passionate about all things tax and very learned as well.I think it would be good for the Minister (a) to provide us with that sort of foundation knowledge—that little bit of background that Deborah Russell has asked for. But when we think about Part 4 in particular as opposed to Part 3 which was described as just a whole lot of numbers changing—but as we found out throughout that process it ended up being not quite so technical and there were some real nuggets of interest in there that without asking those questions we wouldn't necessarily have had those answers elucidated to us in lieu of obviously there being no select committee process.So when I turn my mind to Part 4 I suppose which is a very technical part of the tax change—flowing the tax threshold changes to all sorts of other thresholds in the actual Income Tax Act if I have read that correctly. I wonder if the Minister could tell us a little bit more about how those threshold rates of the new tax thresholds—I think they're on page 20 if I'm in the right part; clause 33 to 39. Yes so if we look at page 20 about the fringe benefit tax rates just as an example it's not clear from the bill. So could you just talk us through that table in particular in relation to those fringe benefit tax rates. I think that background will help inform the rest of the questions that we've got about this part in particular. But if you could do that that would be much appreciated.Just looking at colleagues here I know that there's a couple of other questions probably looking for that elucidation of that foundation work. And I know that Dr Deborah Russell has some other technical questions to ventilate on this part before we sort of move on. So that would be much appreciated if the Minister could do that please and I'll come back and ask my other questions subsequent to that answer.Hon Simon Watts: Yeah thank you very much for the member's questions—CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): I call the Hon Simon Watts.Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Well thank you very much Chair for the opportunity to provide a little bit of context on what is a very exciting Part 4 of this bill.Now what in effect is happening with the dates here is that the overarching changes that we've outlined will be effective from 31 July 2024. However there are a number of consequential tax changes which will occur from 1 April 2025. The member asked the question in terms of why that is the case. Well primarily the reason is to reduce the compliance and administrative burden from the fact that we are starting a process part way through a tax year so that when we make the other consequential adjustments on other tax groups we want to start clean in effect and start from 1 April 2025. So it's very much just a very pragmatic and practical approach that officials have flowed through to enable us to deal with the reality of introducing tax threshold changes part way through the year."