Wong Pansy: Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — In Committee 
Wong Pansy: Taxation (Annual Rates Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:16584] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 Part 3 is all to do with amendments intended to improve the working of the Inland Revenue Department and to make it more friendly to taxpayers. But can I just point out—[ 
Interruption 
] Yes but even with advertisements like those stating the Inland Revenue Department is here to help I am afraid there is still a lot of scepticism in the minds of the public. For example one of the large number of amendments in this legislation is to do with how the department could improve the dispute resolution procedure so I want to demonstrate to my colleagues in the Chamber how successful that attempt is. Twelve submissions were made to the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the so-called improvement of the dispute resolution procedure. Five submissions supported the improvement but considered the amendment did not go far enough and five noted that the amendment did not address taxpayers’ concerns and that the proposals were weighted heavily in favour of the Inland Revenue Department rather than taxpayers. I think that clearly demonstrates that the majority of submitters comprising taxation consultants and large accounting firms still believe that this is very much one-sided legislation. The Inland Revenue Department for example has introduced time frames as to when taxpayers can dispute how much GST they have to pay if they need to. Four years or 2 years is the time limit for taxpayers yet no time limit is imposed on the Inland Revenue Department. 
I will take the opportunity as Rod Donald has said of the “real Minister” being in the chair to raise an issue about how taxpayers perceive themselves as being helpless when dealing with the Inland Revenue Department. A constituent wrote to me about an issue to do with a child support payment. Through mediation he and his ex-wife came to the arrangement that for 30 percent of the time that taxpayer would look after the children. So over 120 days of the year the children would spend time with their father and over another 200-and-something days they would spend time with their mother. My constituent was very upset though because the Inland Revenue Department adopted the stance that unless parents spend 40 percent of the time with their children they cannot qualify for what the department calls shared custody. I think that that father had a point when he said that in effect he is paying for 400-odd days of child support for his children. 
Then he looked through the Inland Revenue Department website and first of all— 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: 400 days in a year? 
PANSY WONG 
: Because he still paid child support when the children were with him—right? For 120 days a year he looked after his children yet he still paid 100 percent of the child support. So it was almost as though he were paying for more than 365 days. I raised that case with the commissioner who said that yes the department has to draw a line in the sand somewhere and that 40 percent sounded like a good line to draw. That is such an arbitrary rule. On the Inland Revenue Department website there is once again a message that the department is friendly and that all people have to do is to write to the commissioner. But when my constituent wrote to the department the standard answer was that it did have that 40 percent rule. 
In that particular case the father was through mediation only allowed to spend 30 percent of his time with his children so should that not be taken into account? How friendly is the department? I do not know whether there is a process whereby that very frustrated person can bring his case. I raise that matter because it does impact on the Inland Revenue Department’s working. Today we looked at the financial review of the department. We saw that child support payments of over $840000000 were outstanding and more than half of that was from penalties. I accept that some people will not pay and they should rightly have penalties imposed on them. But maybe some taxpayers simply find the system so unfair that they refuse to pay.