Russell Deborah; Watts SimonHon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): Thank you Mr Chair because I do want to follow up on something that the Minister said right then. And what the Minister referred to was that each of these—I think the phrase I used was poor innocent little multinational enterprises" just for reference. But each of them has a case manager working with them a case manager at IR—at Inland Revenue. So that's kind of quite interesting because it's interesting to know whether this case manager is assessing those organisations for their compliance with the law or giving advice to those organisations in terms of their compliance with the law. So they have a case manager. Now is that case manager going to be the one telling them how to apply the law actually finding the pieces of law for them? Now that's an interesting because that says that then in fact each of these 25 multinational enterprises (MNEs) has their own specialist tax advisor paid for by Inland Revenue. Or is that case manager actually working in the space of looking at their compliance with tax law looking at the complexity of the arrangements and so on?So there's an interesting number of questions in there because if it's looking at their compliance with the tax law how then can the multinational enterprise sort of feel sure that they are being guided to the correct place of law? There's a real conundrum here actually. It's only become apparent to me as the Minister spoke that we have these case managers—are they assessing the organisation or are they advising the organisation? From what the Minister was saying about having a case manager who would be able to direct these multinational enterprises to particular pieces of OECD law that sounds like advising and I'm not quite sure why Inland Revenue would be in the business of providing advisers to large multinational enterprises. On the other hand if they are assessing these entities then how can they be sitting there and providing them with the links to the law? It's a bit of a puzzle and I would like the Minister to clarify exactly how these case managers work and in particular how they are going to work with respect to this OECD legislation. We've got the model legislation; the MNEs need to know how to access it. They need to be guided to it. But at what point does that guidance turn someone who is assessing compliance with tax law to someone who is advising people on tax law? It's a bit of a puzzle and I'm a bit alarmed by it actually.Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Well thank you Mr Chair. It's interesting—just while I was listening to the member's contribution I did a quick Google search on significant enterprises and it might come to the member's attention that the IRD does have a team that manages what are called entities of significant enterprise. Actually that team existed under the last Government as well. And you know actually that team's been around for a long time. So the fact that this is a surprise and that they do this is not necessarily part of this bill but I can assure the member that this is not a new concept. This team exists and it deals with significant enterprises including State-owned enterprises high-wealth individuals subsidiaries non-resident entertainers etc etc. So again when I stated that these companies are all case managed by IRD that is not something that is a new concept."