Cunliffe David: Supplementary Estimates Taxation (Livestock Valuation Assets Expenditure and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Supplementary Estimates Taxation (Livestock Valuation Assets Expenditure and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 26 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11341. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Supplementary EstimatesHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn):Well Mr Assistant Speaker I am pleased that you do. We have worked together for about 15 years and I am glad you still can.I rise to take a short call to support this Taxation (Livestock Validation Assets Expenditure and Remedial Matters) Bill. In doing so I wish to offer a sincere apology to my Labour colleagues gathered here on the benches because I am afraid colleagues I am going to have to say something nice about National members. Firstly I would like to acknowledge the work of the then chairman of the Finance and Expenditure Committee now the Minister of Revenue who has just resumed his seat the Hon Todd McClay who did a pretty decent job of steering this bill through the select committee and earned Labour’s support for it.Secondly I would like to compliment David Bennett. I do not know that I have ever done this on camera in my entire parliamentary career but I actually have to say David Bennett did a good thing with this bill because David Bennett actually knew enough about the accounting of farm accounts because he is an accountant who specialises in fiddling farm accounts and he knew from past experience some of the lurks and perks. He was able to generously share that with the Finance and Expenditure Committee and ironed out some of the kinks that I have a sneaking suspicion his clients might have benefited from once twice or two or three hundred times in the past.I also want to compliment Paul Goldsmith the new chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee who inherits the large shoes left by Todd McClay. We wish the new chair well. And here endeth the lesson because that is all the being nice I have got time for tonight—on with the business.What is fascinating to New Zealanders about this bill is not so much what is in it but what is not in it. What is not in it is the thing that was able to unite the Council of Trade Unions and well-known right-wing blogger—no not Simon Lusk not Cameron Slater; the next best thing—Matthew Hooton. So as Todd McClay once so rightly said: “Anything Matthew Hooton and the Council of Trade Unions can agree on I’ll be sure to rubber-stamp.”—true. Matthew Hooton said enough is enough and I agree with him on this. Any tax that has compliance costs double the value of the revenue that it raises has got to be a nonsense.Sue Moroney: It was a dog.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: It was a dog and it barked. What is most interesting is not that the Government finally under pressure from the good old Labour Party stripped the car-park tax out of this bill it is that it took the Government months and months to see the obvious. It may have been that the Hon Peter Dunne—God rest his soul—the former Minister of Revenue may have been just a little bit preoccupied with various spooky things to notice that this car-park tax was an absolute dog but it got past the goalie. It got into the public domain and the Minister was backing it. It caused such a furore that in the end with its tail between its legs the Government had to come crawling to select committee members and beg its removal which of course being generous and good-hearted people we were only too happy to assent to on behalf of New Zealanders.I lay that before you because this is fascinating. This is a bill that we all agree on now that the Government has stripped the worst stupidity out of it and now that it has incorporated some of David Bennett’s learnings from a past life as he has turned from poacher to sort of gamekeeper—gamekeeper within the context of the National Party the poachers’ party but hey!This is a very interesting bill because the car-park tax is actually not a stand-alone tax. It is one of the fab four—the fab four stupid taxes that the National Government has been working on this year. The second one is the so-called iPad tax. It is going to put—or it was before we got on to it—fringe benefit tax on everybody’s private use of their cellphones and their iPads. They would have to go through their phone bills and account for which were their private calls and which were their public or business calls and then pay fringe benefit tax on their private calls. If that were not hard enough imagine trying to do that with your data use. What if you were on an all-you-can-eat bundled-up total-for-the-month data plan? How would you apportion that?Well in comes the Labour Government—the Labour Opposition not quite yet the Government but soon to be. The Labour Opposition just points out these few factoids to Government members. They finally got their heads around the fact that the iPad tax was never going to work and they finally killed it before it got to the select committee so they would not have another car-park tax debacle.Nobody told the National Government—how do you like this? It decided it was going to tax your iPad use but it forgot to tax Apple the people who make the iPads. I do not want to be personal about any particular company and of course its accounts are its own business—I am sure it is all legal anyway he says under privilege—but the truth is that Apple paid a total tax in New Zealand last year of about 1 percent.Hon Michael Woodhouse: 1 percent of what?Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: About 1 percent of profit—about 2.5 percent of revenue about 1 percent of profit. That company apparently makes almost no money in New Zealand. If the Minister over there has not noticed its stuff is not cheap. How is it that Apple and Google and the like can operate for pure charity in a jurisdiction like New Zealand? The answer is that the Government is too stupid to write rules to make them pay their fair share of tax. It is so obvious that even the OECD has taken up the cudgels and the Government has finally had to admit it is behind the eight ball and it is going to fix it up. But it will probably need Labour’s help with David Parker and others to actually do the detail because it has not got a clue.If that were not bad enough the third of the fab four stupid taxes that the Government has been beavering away on—Minister listen up because we are coming after you on this one—is the clergy tax. This is an abomination because quite literally the Government will probably burn for years over this. It wants to impose fringe benefit tax on clergy housing and in one fell swoop put most of the churches out of business. My old man my dad—God rest his soul—was a wonderful man. He cared about thepoor. They called him the “Red Reverend”—I wonder why. He was an Anglican minister. I tell you I grew up in a family that did not have two bucks spare at the end of the week because—duh—clergy do not get paid much. They do it for love literally. They survive because they get a rent-free or near rent-free house to live in because they do not get paid a full salary. Except that the National Government wants to impute a supposed value on their clergy housing and then make them pay fringe benefit tax on the total amount even though they have never received it.Hon David Parker: What would they do if they heated their houses?Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Good God imagine if someone heated their houses. There might be a heating tax as well. I tell National this: I am going to maintain the deal we had with the Hon Peter Dunne—and he is honourable I think—which is if you fix it we will not complain about it. But please do not bring the clergy tax to the select committee because Paul Goldsmith does not need a nightmare like the iPad tax. Ladies and gentlemen if that were not dumb enough wait for the fourth instalment of the fab four stupid taxes the Government has been working on.Sue Moroney: More?Hon Member: Another one?Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Yes there is more. You know that the National Government crows that it is rebuilding Christchurch. It is of course the beneficiary of major reinsurance flows that are helping the sagging economic growth rate—strip it out and it is at only about half the normal long-run average growth rate as David Parker pointed out so well. National wants to tax temporary accommodation for Christchurch rebuild workers. It is going to slap fringe benefit tax on temporary accommodation for people like engineers from Auckland who moved down to Christchurch to help the good people of Christchurch get back on their feet. Wham end of the month fringe benefit tax! If you have been staying in a hotel you lucky person you got to have hotel food—fringe benefit tax on you.Where has the National Government been? It is OK for someone like Jami-Lee Matenga “Soprano” Ross because he has never had a real job and we can forgive him. He came straight from kindy to Parliament. But seasoned international diplomats like the current Minister of Revenue should be worldly enough to know that taxing clergy on income they have never earned taxing Christchurch rebuild workers because they have to have a roof over their head in winter in Christchurch taxing iPads but not taxing Apple and taxing car-parks which would cost twice as much to do as the revenue it raised is technically speaking brain-dead. So please National do not make us fix all of that again. Please fix it before it gets to the House.I see that time is up. It is a great shame because there are in fact many many other stupid things that National is doing in the tax portfolio but I shall have to wait for the Committee stage to bring more of those exciting instalments to the New Zealand public. Thank you very much.