Carter DavidRt Hon DAVID CARTER (National): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on this particularly challenging piece of legislation. If I could make some general comments first before I raise some direct questions with the Minister. First of all I came into the select committee process later in the piece. I've been on the Finance and Expenditure Committee many years ago so I've done a lot of tax legislation. This would be the toughest one that I've ever been involved with and listening to my senior colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith—if it was confusing before his contribution I think I was more confused by the time he'd finished.But having said that we then had the excellent contribution from whom the Minister referred to as the honourable Clayton Mitchell"—well he actually referred to him as "the Hon Clayton Cosgrove". No Clayton Cosgrove has left the Parliament. I saw him in the street today. He's fantastically busy—very grateful in fact that there's a Labour-led Government giving him many many opportunities. And if Clayton Mitchell's not yet "the honourable" then he's an endangered species within the New Zealand First caucus because most of them are. But of course his opportunity could come within the next six weeks—his opportunity could come within the next six weeks.Can I take the opportunity in making my general comments to thank the quality of the submissions that we received. So we had the Chartered Accountants of Australia and New Zealand we had Deloitte we had Chapman Tripp we had PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and KPMG all giving some very valuable ideas and causing the select committee and I know the officials themselves to reflect on the quality of those submissions to the extent I think we've got better legislation now before the committee with the amendments coming through from the select committee.I want to also acknowledge the very useful contributions from businesses. Businesses collectively said "There is an issue. We want to work with you. We're not here to dodge our tax or to make suggestions to make it easier to dodge tax. We recognise as indeed the OECD work has demonstrated that there is a responsibility on any company—international or not—upon being here in New Zealand and doing business to make a fair contribution in their taxation." Finally I want to take this opportunity of thanking the officials because this isn't easy work. They were at all stages very diligent to our requests.If I can now move to the specific questions that I've got Minister because it's our duty over the next couple of hours to test that the new Minister of Revenue really does understand and has his head around the complexity of this legislation. So the first one I'm worried about comes from a submission from PWC arguing around the effective implementation of the legislation. So as the Minister will know—I certainly hope he knows—it's 1 July 2018. But of course PWC point out to us that most of these companies who will be now affected by the legislation have a tax law that runs from 1 April to the end of March each year. Their suggestion therefore was wouldn't we be better to implement this legislation from 1 April 2019 rather than 1 July 2018. So I'd like the Minister—and I know he's busy there beavering away thinking of an answer to that—to just give it some thought because we want it to be enacted at a date when it's effectively easy for companies to comply.The second issue I want to touch on—and the Minister will be aware of the commentary in the report—is the grandparenting of advance pricing agreements (APAs). Now as I understand—and we've made a number of changes that affect clauses 35(7) 36(6) 37(2) 42B(3) 44(3) 46(2) and 47(2). Advance pricing agreements as I'm sure the Minister knows are where those agreements have been entered into so that a corporate can go to the IRD and get an understanding or an agreement around rules transfer pricing etc. so they know their commitment to taxation from the very start. The last time I was involved in the select committee we had a similar issue around binding rulings whereby any taxpayer could go to the IRD and get a binding ruling which seemed to me to be pretty much the same thing. So I'm interested in the Minister explaining in some detail for the benefit of the committee the difference between an APA—an advance pricing arrangement—and of course a binding ruling.The second thing that I think's relevant here is how frequently have these APAs—the advance pricing agreements—been established? How many are there? The other one that concerns me is: has the IRD investigated the content of some of these advance pricing agreements to make sure they don't have rollover clauses that in fact could allow the arrangement to then persist long after the initiation of the Taxation (Neutralising Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) Bill?The very final point that I'd be really grateful for the Minister to explain to the committee and expand on his earlier comments is around the expected revenue from the enactment of this legislation. He used the figure when he stood to his feet earlier around it being $200 million. Now is that $200 million a year or is it $200 million over the next four years and how has that figure been arrived at? It seems to me it's relatively difficult despite our acknowledged expertise within IRD and the work done by the OECD to actually get a handle on the amount of revenue that will be received by Government once this legislation is enacted. It is a relatively challenging piece of work for IRD.So I won't take any further point because I think I've raised there three very valuable points for the Minister to cogitate on. I'm looking forward to his answers which I think he's about to give to me now."