Robertson Grant: Taxation (Transformation: First Phase Simplification and Other Measures) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Taxation (Transformation: First Phase Simplification and Other Measures) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11156. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Mr Chairperson you are catching the eye of the Minister of Revenue there to see whether he wanted to respond to those questions—I am sure he will in time. I just have a couple of smaller minor matters in Part 2 of the Taxation (Transformation: First Phase Simplification and Other Measures) Bill to raise that have not been raised yet because the Government members of the Committee are assiduously promoting this piece of legislation that has come before the House which they are obviously so proud to get up and talk about.I want to talk about one matter that is actually a very positive and necessary development for a reasonably small group of people but one for whom this particular clause matters and that is around the question of special tax codes. This did occupy a little bit of time for the Finance and Expenditure Committee when we were working on it. Essentially amendments are being made to the Tax Administration Act to allow the Commissioner of Inland Revenue to provide special tax code certificates directly to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) to help people receiving New Zealand superannuation or veterans pensions to meet their income tax obligations. These amendments are basically about reducing compliance costs imposed on superannuitants or veterans pensions recipients in providing the certificate to the MSD and removing any delay in the application of the correct tax reduction rate.It is quite a specific change but one that affects a group of people for whom the amount of income they are getting outside of their pension source particularly is often quite small and there have been unnecessary delays in the relationship between the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) and MSD in terms of providing the information that is required. So the amendments are going to enable the commissioner to provide a special tax code certificate directly to MSD when the superannuitant or veterans pension recipient has applied for that certificate and advised MSD they want the certificate to apply to their superannuation income or veterans pension income. Many electorate MPs in the House will have had the experience of someone coming to their office to talk about the issues that arise between making choices about these issues and how quickly you are able to access the money. So I think this will be a welcome change for those people.There was one issue where it appeared in the original drafting we were limiting this to being in respect of having only one employer. If someone had more than one employer that may have been ruled out so a change has been made within new clause 84 of the bill to make sure the reference could be to income from one or more employers. That small oversight was one that would have led to more people coming back to Mr Woodhouse asking him to make it easier for them to be able to work between MSD and IRD. So I do want to actually congratulate the Government on that. It is a matter that has been of concern to those who receive veterans pensions particularly that there was unnecessary bureaucratic delay and unnecessary double-handling essentially of the issues of the income they receive. I thank the Minister and the officials for bringing that before the Committee.The only other matter I wanted to raise in Part 2 relates to biometric information and I do think this is one of those clauses we will come back to in time—we all know the use of biometric information is increasing all over the world. Every time we got to an airport every time we enter all kinds of different buildings now biometric information is used. The issue here was around the disclosure of biometric information and potentially the illegal disclosure of biometric information under the now famous section 81 of the Tax Administration Act. What the previous clause 117(5) of this bill did was authorise the disclosure of taxpayer voice biometric information to an officer or employee of a public sector agency. What the amendment the committee proposed did was specify that that data could be released only with the taxpayer’s consent and only for the purpose of verifying the identity of the client.I know as a lot of taxpayers are doing more of their interactions with the IRD online and more of their interactions over the phone that there is an increasing concern about what happens to that data and what happens to that information particularly in the days of identity theft and all those sorts of things—biometric voice data is now very significant in the interactions that you have. The committee again not wanting to get in the way of progress but wanting to continually assure ourselves that we are putting the right rules around the use of this new information felt that this was an additional safeguard that we could put in. The Minister of Revenue will be delighted to know that he will now be notified when biometric information is shared. [Bell rung] Mr Chair?The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Grant Robertson.GRANT ROBERTSON: Just briefly the Minister will be notified now when the information is shared—