Mallard Trevor; Nash StuartThe CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Stuart Nash. STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Thank you Mr Chair—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I was looking for an alternative Mr Nash. STUART NASH: I was not too sure whether you had forgotten my name or you were looking for someone else. There are a couple of points I would like to make about clause 3. First of all we are talking about the annual rates of income tax for the 2016-17 tax year. That is the year that starts on 1 April 2016—Hon Member: 1 April or July?STUART NASH: —sorry 1 July 2016—and finishes on 30 June 2017. In my first contribution I talked about this being retrospective but I do not know whether this is because I am having a look at when the commencement date for this part of the bill is and actually I cannot find it anywhere in here as being retrospective. It does not make sense to me because these are the tax rates for a financial year that actually started about 6 months ago or 9 months ago. So by its very nature it must be retrospective and yet I cannot find anywhere in the commencement clause—and I know we are debating clause 3 but it would be good to know when this clause actually does commence because you know in tax legislation we just cannot make an assumption that because it is at the beginning of the 2016 tax year we just assume that that is when it is going to be. Tax legislation by its very nature must be very very tight and very very specific because we know the consequences if it is not. The consequences of that are that men and women with huge brains who spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find loopholes will make a substantial amount of money advising clients on how to get around these massive big bits of paper. I doubt that there is any consequence—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): OK I have had time to look very carefully at the bill and the very large clause 2 in the bill. If the member wants to discuss the commencement he can do it during that clause. Now going back to clause 3 in Part 1. STUART NASH: Thank you Mr Chair but I do think it is important to know just when clause 3 actually does commence. The other thing I would like to talk about is there is a quite a big regulatory impact statement and disclosure statement for this whole bill but the interesting thing is there is one whole part that is missing from this regulatory impact statement and that is Part 1. What it says on Part 1 is that Although New Zealand has relatively strong tax settings [etc.] … Changes in the economic environment [etc.] … can mean that the tax system becomes unfair inefficient complex or uncertain." I would have thought that clause 3 in this bill at least deserves some form of commentary on whether it is still seen as fair as efficient and as fit for the environment because there have been changes in the economic environment. I think that if we are talking about one whole part of a substantial piece of legislation then the officials can at least do us the respect of letting us know whether they believe that Part 1 is fair in the changing conditions because when clause 3 was implemented the economic environment was different from what it is now. When these tax rates were implemented as outlined in Part 1 the environment was different and I think that the officials should have outlined the arguments on whether Part 1 still fitted the economic environment—whether it still maintained the integrity of the tax system. I am not saying that these rates outlined in Part 1 are right or wrong. I am not saying whether they should be higher or lower. I am not saying whether they should have taken account of fiscal drag or anything along those lines. What I am saying is that as members of Parliament we deserve commentary on whether they are still fit for purpose and what we do not see anywhere in any commentary on this bill is any sort of analysis of Part 1—of the annual tax rates for the income year that we are in at the moment. I do not think that is right because this is a very important part of the bill which affects nearly every single New Zealander who is paying taxes—in fact not nearly every single New Zealander. It affects every single New Zealander because when we are talking about annual tax rates we are not just talking about income tax; we are talking about company tax rates we are talking about trust tax rates and we are talking about charity tax rates."