Nash StuartHon STUART NASH (Minister of Revenue): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. I want to make one thing clear and that is that with the decisive action we took yesterday we can now potentially prevent the worst of this. This is why we went hard and we went early. As the Prime Minister said and she reiterated yesterday the health of New Zealanders is our number one priority. We also know that the best protection for our economy is getting this virus under control. That is the number one priority for the Minister of Health and it's the number one priority for this Government. And we're taking decisive and necessary steps in the national interest. There will undoubtedly be disruption and I think that's been highlighted by the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister but the potential cost of not acting now is too high. Things are changing rapidly—they are changing rapidly. But the thing is that we have got a plan. As the Minister of Finance has said the plan will change as it needs to. It is fluid.One of my roles is as the Minister of Revenue and I would like to highlight just four tax items that we announced yesterday that I think will help small to medium and large businesses. The thing I want to make clear first and foremost though is the wage subsidy package we are talking about is not just available to small to medium businesses which has been suggested; it is available to all businesses. However there is a cap of $150000. The first thing I would say to any business that is in trouble is first of all contact your bank. The second thing I would say is contact your tax agent or go online and look at the resources from Inland Revenue.Now I just want to outline four tax items. The first one is depreciation for commercial and industrial buildings and this includes hotels and motels; it does not include Airbnbs. The reason we are doing this is because we believe that we need to help the productive economy. If we allow companies that own these commercial industrial buildings to depreciate value—which actually used to be the case until 2010—this will help. And let me give you one example: a building worth $3 million at 2 percent depreciation—that's $60000 in the first year—that's $16800 less tax that the person will have to pay.The second thing I'd like to talk about is the low-value asset write-off. What this is is from 1 April this year a company can buy an item worth $5000 or less and they do not have to depreciate that; they can write it off immediately. What the Tax Working Group told us is that this was a real bugbear—it increased compliance costs. So what we want to do is decrease compliance costs and really encourage small to medium enterprises our businessmen and businesswomen around the country to go out there and buy and buy local.The third thing is provisional tax. What we've done is we've said that we're increasing the provisional tax threshold from $2500 to $5000. That means if you're earning around about $18000 a businessperson does not have to pay in instalments; they can pay at the end of the year which actually is February 2022.This is about 95000 companies—this will improve their cash flow. They can if they want to pay early. They can if they want to enter into tax pooling arrangements but they don't have to. We think this will help 95000 businesses. The fourth is use of money interest. Now this applies from 14 February and this is targeted. So what we're saying is businesses who find that their income has dropped by 30 percent compared to a year ago and have talked to their bank and who are impacted by COVID-19 they can have use of money interest wiped from any tax debt. But they will have to enter into an instalment with Inland Revenue to pay their tax back; they just won't pay any interest on that. And again we think this will help. But my advice—I just want to reiterate this—is if a business is finding themselves in trouble please do not bury your head in the sand. Talk to your bank talk to your tax agent and come up with an instalment. That is what we want businesses to do.