White Helen; Edmonds Barbara; Watts SimonHELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you Madam Chair. This is an absolute genuine attempt to have a discussion about something that I raised and the Minister partially answered. And I have been mulling over the answer I got because it doesn't satisfy me and I'd ask for him to take it just that one step further.So I was talking in my contribution about the fact that we had in this section amounts that we were compelling New Zealanders who were on incomes to pay across the board when there were others we knew because of the research who were paying very little and we have a lot of information now about those high-wealth individuals deliberately churning money into businesses so that they never made a profit and so they were actually increasing their wealth pie every year by exponentially more than the people who were paying these taxes. And what I understood the Minister did when he answered my question was talk about it as a kind of highfalutin philosophical approach. And I wanted to challenge that and ask him to turn his mind to the fact that what we're talking about here is peoples' actual money in their pockets. This is real for people. This isn't philosophy this is economics.So what we have here is base rates that we're setting to compel New Zealanders who are on limited incomes and we are setting them today without what it seems to be thought or even a plan about what we're going to do to make that system fair when we know—we can't unpack this genie; it's come out of the bottle. We now know that there's a whole lot of people who have money to burn in comparison who are not facing the cost of living crisis and they are actually paying rates which are so much—dramatically—lower and they're doing that in a way. And I'll explain a little bit about how I understand that happens. I've had the benefit of dealing with some of these groups of high-paid individuals. They're high-wealth individuals often because of inheritance. They've come in through—and by the looks of people people are subjective but I would think that the research actually proves that. Often it's because they made money at times when the Government and us rolling the settings they set the parameters of the way we worked which meant that people had things like a monopoly interest in jam and they made a lot of money or oil. And they made that money and then they run these things called family offices.CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Can you bring it back to the bill please?HELEN WHITE: Thank you Madam Chair. So if they are running these entities they have got obviously every right to look at it logically and minimise the amount of tax they have. But I would wonder whether the Minister could answer whether that is a just system and whether there is a plan around this? We're putting into place these rates where we're actually compelling people and I would like to know from the Minister does he really think it's a philosophical highfalutin point that I'm making or does he accept that that's a pragmatic issue? Because we've got people on much lower amounts of money trying to make ends meet. And people on relatively high incomes but every penny is being paid for under this particular clause—this is where they pay it. This is where the rubber hits the road. Does he consider that highfalutin philosophy or does he consider that the base economic structure at we as a Government have absolutely a need in this situation to deal with? We need to actually address that.So I would genuinely love the Minister to take me there in terms of what the logic is here. What is the logic where we're doing that without thinking that or are we going to do it? What is the plan? So what's the logic? What's the plan? Is this philosophy or is this basic economics? How are we flying in the face of that information? How are we still going in this particular way? Thank you.CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Can I just remind members before I take the next call we are talking about Part 1 and the tax rates.Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you Madam Chair. My question is actually in relation to the response given by the Minister around why the increase to the trustee tax rate is covered under Part 2 of this particular bill and not Part 1. And the reason that the Minister gave is because it's for a different income tax year.So I want to take the House back to my earlier speech where I talked about the history of why we have the taxation provisions the way that the House debates it. So the House debates that particular clause 3 as a separate point. And when I look at Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand it says When a committee of the whole House considers a bill that includes an annual taxing provision the committee must consider this provision as a separately debatable question. The Standing Orders Committee has held that the annual taxing provision is so important that the committee of the whole House should not have the power to avoid its separate consideration. The separate debate could be dispensed with only by way of an instruction from the House to the committee."So I do question again—I can understand why you can put the consequential amendments to the rest of what happens in the Income Tax Act for the trustee tax rate in Part 2. But given that we are actually changing a rate of tax regardless of whether it's the same or different income tax year given our Standing Orders Committee and the way that review was done in 2011 given that particular outcome that had come from that Standing Orders Committee review why then isn't just that part—the increase from 33 percent to 39 percent—not in Part 1 of the particular bill?Again I can appreciate there is a whole lot of consequential amendments and changes to other parts of the Income Tax Act as a result of that increased change. But given that Parliament has a very well-known history for ensuring that we debate those changes to tax rates or the confirmation of tax rates as a separate part why is that small part—which is it's going from 33 percent to 39 percent—not included in Part 1 but has been included in Part 2? Again I accept there may be different consequential amendments as a result of it but I just want to understand from the Minister the instructions that he gave to his drafters as to why it should be in Part 1. Given that it is a rate change it is part of that taxation provision that we need to confirm the actual rate and why it's not in the Part 1 where we are confirming and trying to debate the confirmation of those rates.Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Thank you very much Madam Chair. In regards to the member's questions in regards to this so this is a standard process from a drafting perspective. Part 1 sets out the annual rates of the current year 2023-2024. And Part 2 introduces a 39 percent trustee tax rate which would apply from 2024-2025. Obviously this can be debated as part of Part 2 of the bill which no doubt will follow Part 1.In regards to Helen White's questions I think—and I apologise I just heard the last part of that but there's not much more I want to comment on that."