Edmonds BarbaraHon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Kia ora Madam Chair. Thank you very much for the opportunity to take a call on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023-24 Multinational Tax and Remedial Matters) Bill. I do want to acknowledge the Minister of Revenue for his work on this bill because as I said in a previous reading to the House this bill has had two fathers and one mother and so I accept now that you've adopted this bill and I acknowledge as well the work that you did to accept the Amendment Paper that we had introduced in relation to the North Island floods.I do want to ask the Minister around his comfort levels in relation to the annual rates—I know we are confirming the 2023-24 tax share—and whether the Minister had actually considered because I know that very soon in the Budget they will be tabling their own particular annual rates or changes of tax rates because of the work that they're doing as part of the Budget. I'm not going to ask the Minister to divulge any Budget secrets given we still have a couple of months to go but I do want to ask the Minister around very similar lines to what the Hon Dr Deborah Russell had just questioned around parts of the IMF report.I'm just going to indulge the committee: the reason why we're here for the annual rates bills—and it happens once a year; sometimes twice if there's a Budget—is that in order for the Government to actually collect taxes to be able to impose taxes it has to be done through this House. It has to be done through an Act of Parliament. There are regulations and sub-schedules for other areas but actually for individual income tax rates it needs to be done through Parliament. And it's really important that that particular process is allowed to have a select committee process and I do want to acknowledge both the Hon David Parker and the new Minister in relation to ensuring that there was a select committee process on this.We did get a couple of submissions in relation to the questioning around actually whether these rates were correct or not. And some people had provided out of scope because they actually said that we should just have no taxation. As Madam Chair will know that is out of the scope for this particular part of the bill. But what I really wanted to just give the Minister time to digest is really the question that the Hon Dr Deborah Russell had around the IMF findings and whether he had given any consideration to whether we needed to change Part 1 clause 3 of this particular bill in relation to that new IMF report. I know it's only been done in the last week so I understand if he has not yet come to a position on it.The other thing that I wanted to ask the Minister was: was there any consideration given that we're going to have the Budget in a few months' time—had he actually considered whether this was an appropriate vehicle in order to bring in some of that tax relief as they would like to say; you know whether this was an opportunity to have a bit more time for the public of New Zealand to be able to see what sort of tax relief that they're going to get?But my question really is: how does the Minister respond to the IMF report that has come out quite recently around the progressivity of the rates which the Hon Dr Russell referred to? And just a question as to whether he had actively considered whether the relief changes that they're going to do as part of Budget whether they had thought about bringing them a little bit earlier as part of this bill.