MacLeod DavidDAVID MacLEOD (National—New Plymouth): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure for me to stand and talk to this bill the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023-24 Multinational Tax and Remedial Matters) Bill. And it's very pleasing to have just recently returned to the House to find that everybody is basically supporting this through this particular stage although it may be questionable about future parts according to the Opposition there.But when I joined Parliament and was lucky enough to be on the Finance and Expenditure Committee I soon realised the amount of work that had already been done. And as was previously mentioned I think it was Barbara Edmonds who called this the Two Fathers and a Mother Bill". It's been through a number of Ministers' hands to get to where it is today. I look at the process that has been run and I do feel that what I have been involved with—the many submitters that have come forward to present and the way in which the committee has resolved with what it has presented to the House today—has been a very thorough process. If I look at the purpose and without reading the purpose of the bill I would summarise it as being a bill about fairness. It's about the fairness of individuals not being overtaxed; it's about the fairness of entities being trusts and that not being overtaxed; but it's also about reasonableness and that's about individuals and entities that have earned profits actually paying their fair share of tax as a result of that.There are many other main purposes of this bill. One of them that I would like to speak to is the global anti-base erosion (GloBE) rules and that is the one with regards to multinational entities. Obviously we're talking about entities that do have a significant revenue. In fact they only reach the threshold of being attached to these rules once they've reached €750 million which provides them the position of having the effective rate of 15 percent. That rule is all about making sure that we don't have entities shifting their profits around the world and removing the ability to pay taxes. The many countries that have already signed up to the GloBE rules is a very good step forward to making sure that any profits that are earned in a jurisdiction are paying a fair and reasonable tax in that jurisdiction. I'm hoping that the GloBE rules will actually ultimately affect that outcome particularly once more countries attend. I understand it's north of 130 countries that are looking at that at this particular point in time and I'm sure many of those countries are very fortunate that they've actually got that passed through.Obviously with those GloBE rules administered at an OECD level they are up for change. There are clauses within the bill that allow our country to have our autonomy if we don't agree with it so it's not like it's a catch-all. So I think we've got sensible clauses within the bill that protect our sovereignty but at this stage joining with the rest of them I think makes sense as well.There's been considerable debate amongst the submitters. There's been plenty of submissions about the trust tax rate. Clearly on that I think there was argument about what is a reasonable threshold. At the beginning every trust was going to be paying the highest tax rate of 39c in the dollar for all of their profits or income earned. Obviously it came to the point with the submissions that we felt that that wasn't actually fair and the $10000 threshold for the 39c tax rate coming into play the committee felt was fair and reasonable. We did have a look at many different levels including right up to as high as $100000 and maybe even further north of that. Probably for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction and we felt that this $10000 threshold ensures that maybe large trusts aren't incentivised to cut themselves down into smaller revenue-earning trusts and endeavouring to play the tax system that way. The cost of not just starting up a trust but also yearly or annually administering a trust probably dissuades people from actually doing that. So I'm pleased to take this short call and I'm happy to support the bill to the House."