Brooking RachelRACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker for the opportunity to speak on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2022-23 Platform Economy and Remedial Matters) Bill (No 2).I'm a new member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and I want to acknowledge the previous committee members the Hon Barbara Edmonds Glen Bennett and Helen White who were all involved in hearing the submissions on this bill. There were 813 submissions and 24 oral submissions. There was of course advice from Inland Revenue and the Regulations Review Committee—great committee which I may have been on at that time. We had an independent reviewer as well who was very helpful for what is a very technical bill that changes a lot of different pieces of legislation. Of course we also had the Office of the Clerk and as always the Parliamentary Counsel Office. So I want to thank them for their work. As you will have noted from the speeches tonight it's a very engaged select committee. There have been many amendments to this bill but not to the annual rates and income tax. So the amendments are to the tax settings. As I mentioned before the bill is omnibus with amendments to eight different Acts five of which have tax" somewhere in their title but one of them is the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 and I want to get to that change.And that is one of the changes in this is about the build-to-rent exemption from interest limitation. The interest limitation rules prevent property investors from writing off mortgage interest as an expense when paying tax but there were exemptions when this law came into effect from 2021. There are exemptions for new buildings for 20 years when the owner lives in them. So the logic behind this exemption is to incentivise new buildings. We need more dwellings in New Zealand so that's a good thing. But it is linked to ownership so that doesn't really work for rentals. So this bill provides an exemption for build-to-rent dwellings that meet an asset class definition and it goes in perpetuity. So the bill as introduced required via the definition of build-to-rent land 20 dwellings on contiguous land. This requirement for the land to be contiguous was considered via submissions and the select committee has removed that requirement for that land to be contiguous. There were further small changes from the select committee around this enabling of the build-to-rent exemption. One of those changes is at clause 183(2B) inserting new clause 39C and that enables the commissioner to share taxpayer information with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. The submitters also raised an inconsistency with the Residential Tenancies Act definition of "fixed-term tenancy" not including a tenancy that is terminated by notice. The inconsistency here is that the build-to-rent definition that's in this bill does allow for a 56-day notice by tenants. So there is now in this legislation an amendment to the Residential Tenancies Act to incorporate this build-to-rent definition. Scope issues around that did go to the Business Committee.This bill overall produces a more coherent and fair tax system and it includes encouragement as well as wanting to provide more houses and having the exception on the build-to-rent—houses for people to rent in long-term secure tenancies that is. Also there's the changes to the fringe benefit tax that the Minister touched on as well that will allow other modes of transport other than vehicles—so public transport—to get that. And also the changes that the select committee made extend that to a total mobility scheme. So I'm proud to commend this bill to the House."