Mapp Wayne: Income Tax Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Mapp Wayne: Income Tax Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12094] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 Listeners tonight will be interested to know that National is supporting this bill. The reason we are doing so is that it is a consolidation and rewrite of the legislation. That is an important project. For instance a former colleague of mine currently teaching about tax has written a book of some 1200 pages—I have written a small portion of it—and he will be incorporating the outcome of this legislation which I presume will have its third reading next week. So the professional community—accountants lawyers tax specialists and tax agents—are looking forward to the passage of this bill. I am certainly conscious that it has been the work of many many years to bring it to fruition. 
Mr Dunne referred to the fact that it is the outcome or outgrowth of legislation from 1913. I must confess that I was under the impression that legislation went back to the 1890s for the first income tax Act. But the remarkable thing is that that early legislation had about 100 clauses and was about 30 pages long. Today we are faced with two massive volumes of well over 2000 pages yet every tax practitioner would be able to tell us that the core of the Act is still contained in just 20-odd clauses at the beginning of the legislation. 
However just because we are supporting the legislation that support should not be interpreted—as the Government is most unjustly doing—as supporting its unreasonable and irrational policies. I refer members to an example of that. I was frankly amazed to hear the Minister of Revenue trumpeting about why New Zealand’s corporate tax rate had remained at 33 percent. That is quite remarkable at a time we have a surplus approaching $6 billion. Some might indeed liken the Minister of Finance to Scrooge sitting on his piles of money unwilling to let any part of it go and wanting to amass and accrete more and more. Is he considering perhaps an $8 billion surplus next year but is unwilling to let any part of it go? 
I have news for the ideologues of the left—those people represented by the personage of Dr Cullen—it is not the Government’s money; it is the product of hard-working New Zealanders firms and businesses and the money the Government takes off those firms and businesses is money not available for investment. Now the Minister of Finance says that people can have their 30 percent tax rate provided they have every other part of the Australian tax system—capital gains and so forth. He has forgotten about the accelerated depreciation allowances which I can tell him many people would like to have. 
But the real point is that the Minister is completely unaware of the concept of comparative advantage. Why does the Government not give New Zealanders and New Zealand companies a head start? Does it not realise that in many respects we are disadvantaged in New Zealand? We have a smaller economy a smaller market and a location further away from our markets—all of those things add costs to New Zealand businesses. Why not give those businesses a head start? That is the way to growth. The Minister must surely know of the experience of Ireland which gave precisely that advantage to its businesses. Ireland is off the coast of Europe isolated and having to deal with the disadvantages of that so the answer was to give people a special advantage and if the 30 percent rate leads to an advantage for New Zealanders over Australians frankly I say: “Well and good.” That is actually what New Zealand business needs to sustain investment jobs and growth. I urge the Minister to take the message on board.