Copeland Gordon: Charities Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Copeland Gordon: Charities Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:19956] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I want to take a brief call on Part 1 of the Charities Bill. Let me just say for a start in response to the remarks from the member Katherine Rich that I would have thought it was actually quite meritorious for the Government and the Social Services Committee that considered this bill to have changed the bill significantly in response to the genuine concerns of the many submitters whom we heard. I do not find it a very convincing argument that having heard those submissions it is some kind of cardinal sin to change the bill accordingly. 
The other point I make is that under this bill registration for charities is not compulsory. Indeed because of my involvement in the sector a number of charities have already come to me and said they are not sure whether they really want to register because of the compliance costs involved. I have said to a couple of them that they should think carefully about that. The purpose of registration in Part 1 is to enable charities to remain exempt from income tax. Many smaller charities do not have any taxable income as defined in terms of the Income Tax Act. For a lot of charities whatever comes in on one hand in terms of income is immediately applied to charitable works on the other so they do not actually have any taxable income. 
So it is still an option for such charities to decide not to register. It does not make them some sort of second-class citizen. They are still legitimate charities—it is just that they will not get tax relief if they have some taxable income which might be just a few bucks of interest for example that they have to pay tax on. 
That is an option for charities. In contrast the large prominent public charities will certainly of course need to register and so forth in order to continue to access income tax relief and also to ensure that money given to those charities is eligible for what we call donee tax rebates. 
I really want to talk about just one aspect of the amendments to clause 4 as set out in Supplementary Order Paper 357 which changes the definition of “officer”. This is a very worthwhile amendment. It arose as a result of submissions received from the Inter-Church Working Party on Taxation and in particular from the representatives of the Anglican and Presbyterian Churches. Those Churches are governed by bodies—in the Anglican Church referred to as synods—that comprise several hundred people. 
It would be quite impossible to have all those several hundred people designated as officers of the charity. For example we have to ensure that every one of those people is not disqualified from being an officer in terms of this bill and it would be quite an impractical way to proceed. Accordingly this amendment is aimed at ensuring that the Anglican and Presbyterian Churches and to some extent the Methodist Church will be able to register themselves and have a definition of “officer” that will fit the circumstances of their organisations. That is a very good step forward. 
Furthermore the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper omits and substitutes a new definition of “officer” and adds subclause (c) and subclause (d) to do with regulations just in case the submitters the select committee and the Government itself have missed something and a problem arises about registration to do with officers. Regulations may then be put in place to overcome whatever difficulty arises. 
The intent is to give complete flexibility to the new commission so that it can register charities that come to it having regard to their particular circumstances. Those circumstances vary enormously. For example the situation as between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church is quite radically different. This is a good step forward and I commend the Supplementary Order Paper to the Committee.