O'Connor Greg; Smith Stuart; Russell DeborahIn CommitteePart 1 Income Tax Act 2007 amendments commencing 1 April 2024CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members the House is in committee on the Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill. Members we start with the debate on Part 1 the debate on clauses 3 to 7 Income Tax Act 2007 amendments commencing 1 April 2024". The question is that Part 1 stand part.STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Point of order. I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one question.CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Leave is sought. Is there any objection? There is.Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): Mr Chair thank you. There's a fair amount to absorb in this bill and we've only had it in our hands for a few hours. I do appreciate the efforts to which the Government went to ensure that the bill was actually available to us from 2 p.m. So that was a generous gesture and I think it has made—well it's still a lot to absorb in a few hours. We've had a lot of conversation in the last two readings of the bill about the generalities of this bill and it is trying to get into some of the specifics which I very much want to do now.Part 1 amends the Income Tax Act 2007. I'm just trying to find my way to clause 3 because I know I had something I wanted to ask about that clause 3. We're amending—I know it was—oh it must be clause 4. So there's a whole lot of stuff there in clause 4 where we're inserting new sections LC 14 and LC 15. Now those sections of the Income Tax Act 2007 are to do with the various tax credits that are available. So LC 14 is the amount of the tax credit for independent earners for 1 April 2024 to 30 July 2024 and then new section LC 15 is the amount of the tax credit for independent earners for 31 July 2024 to 31 March 2025. These are really unusual dates. They are really unusual dates to appear in a tax bill. The dates are normally like you know the first of a month or maybe the last day of a month and the dates that we normally expect to see in an income tax bill are dates like you know 1 April which is the first day of the tax year or 31 March the last day of the tax year. We might see dates like maybe you know 1 October because that's halfway through. So we'd normally expect to see the beginning the end the quarters but in this one—so this is the tax credit that's available to independent earners. Now that's a tax credit that's designed for people who are working. They're in what's called full-time—you know deemed to be full-time work. They're not on an especially high income; though I note that now the independent earners tax rate will go up to—it only fully abates at I think $70000. I'll have to check that with the Minister at some stage. Hon Simon Watts: $70000.Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Oh it abates up to $70000. So what it's done is it's for people who get no other form of tax credit. They're not on benefit they're not getting superannuation they're not getting any of the other tax credits and it just gives a little bit of extra to people who are you know earning their own income and it just gets them a little bit further along.But the bit that's really curious is that date. It's a really really unusual date. I'd like the Minister to explain why that particular date has been chosen—in new section LC 14 1 April 2024 to 30 July 2024 and in LC 15 31 July 2024 to 31 March 2025. So there's obviously all that sort of stuff going on in there. But of course those are dates that are related to a tax year. I guess the difficult or interesting thing was it will be in relation—not just the particularly curious dates but how it's going to work for someone who has an income year that is different from the standard tax year. So what dates are going to apply in that case? So that will make a bit of a difference as well. I sort of just want to see what the impact of the income year versus the tax year is there. So I'd like the Minister to explain that. Is there somewhere else? We've got some curious dates aligned to these curious dates—which you know just to see why it's all set up that way.So if the Minister could explain I would be very grateful to know exactly why in this very first set of things we're debating having a little bit of a look at we've got those very very unusual dates."