Connell Brian: Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — In Committee 
Connell Brian: Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:16588] 
BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) 
: 
 There are three great lies in the world. One of them is: “I am here from head office—trust me.” The second is: “I’m from the IRD I’m here to help—trust me.” The third one is: “I didn’t know I had to pay tax.” In fact we might be able to add a fourth one: “I didn’t know it was a golden handshake.”—no it would be: “I didn’t take it.” Have members tried to deal with the Inland Revenue Department when it has come to “assist” them? Do members know what the experience is like? The department turns one over every which way because it has a view that one has done something wrong. That is the position the department starts from. Anyone who suggests that this legislation will try to make the department more user-friendly is engaged in a giant misconception. 
But giant misconceptions come easily to this Government do they not? Clause 105 deals with late-filing penalties and clause 106 deals with tax shortfalls. I have heard a number of arguments mounted that those measures might be retrospective legislation to try to get John Tamihere off the hook. I have to say to those members that they have got it all wrong. They surely were not designed with that in mind because John Tamihere simply does not pay tax. Therefore there are no tax shortfalls. It does not apply to him. The Government is saying to New Zealanders that that is OK. 
Have members ever been in the position where the Inland Revenue Department says they owe it money? If a person says in return: “Well actually no I don’t. You owe me money and by the way I want a 20 percent tax penalty on top of that.” does the department do that? Absolutely not! [ 
Interruption 
] There are a few members calling out over there. I do not know which ones they are but we could pick any one of them and they would be all the evidence we would want to see that the moratorium on GMOs should never have been lifted. 
Let us turn to clauses 112 through to 114. Those people who believe that acting as the Government’s tax collector in terms of PAYE is a good idea should put up their hands. Not even a Government member put a hand up. Not even the Minister put his hand up. This is a person who maintains that he has been in a position of collecting PAYE before and he simply has not done it; he is intellectually dishonest—and that is being very kind to him. Those people who maintain that the collection of PAYE actually helps the productive sector have got rocks in their head. Actually that tells us that those members have never engaged in earning a fair buck for this country in their lives. They have never been part of the productive sector. They have been on the front teat all their lives and they want the hard workers in this country to continue to contribute on their behalf. 
It is compliance costs and red tape costs such as those that this hugely complex piece of legislation is reinforcing that are driving business people in this country to distraction. The cost is hard to measure but when one is spending 1 or 2 days a month acting as the Government’s tax collector one knows that there is a real cost to one’s business. It might be hard to quantify but there is a real cost to one’s business. 
The argument that has been proposed that with this bill the dispute resolution procedures are somewhat streamlined is another one of the fallacies that the Minister in the chair is trying to peddle. Anyone who has engaged with those procedures knows that that is a nonsense.