Swain Paul: Income Tax Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Swain Paul: Income Tax Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:641;Page:11276] 
Hon PAUL SWAIN (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I will make some general comments about the Income Tax Bill but I also want to follow along from what Lockwood Smith has just said. I think the Finance and Expenditure Committee worked reasonably diligently on these matters— 
R Doug Woolerton 
: Extremely! 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: Well it worked extremely diligently I hear. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: But we didn’t consider that. 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: I will come to that point. I do not know whether I hear anything better than “extremely diligently” but it certainly worked very hard on it. The point that Lockwood Smith makes is a fair one. The vast majority of big issues had been resolved but a few issues were still being debated right up to the end of the process. I think the member mentioned issues such as place of abode which was an area where there was some disagreement about whether it would be clear enough as to whether it was in the old or new style. 
I think it would be useful for the Minister in the chair Lianne Dalziel to make a quick comment about whether there was any major debate about Supplementary Order Paper 136. The Minister is nodding in order to show that yes she feels that she might be inspired shortly to rise and give a view on this matter. That would be extremely helpful coming from the Minister whom we know has a deep interest in this matter. 
Having said that I say that it is important to know that there are no outstanding issues when we consider the amendments on this Supplementary Order Paper. I assume that there are not any issues; I assume that the Rewrite Advisory Panel has had a long conversation with the industry and that all is OK. I suppose that all we need is for the Minister to say that all is OK. Her word is good enough for me because she is a conscientious and hard-working Minister as we know. 
Putting that to one side I would say that the issue of course is non-controversial. The bill is a rewrite of the Income Tax Act hopefully in modern plain language. I remember the great comment John Shewan made before a select committee once. He said that trying to explain tax law to people was like trying to explain television to a goldfish. That was probably a fair kind of analogy. 
Chris Tremain 
: What are you saying about the Minister? 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: What did he say about the Minister? He did not say anything particularly about the Minister except to make that comment about tax law. 
One of the issues of course is the hope that people and individual taxpayers can more easily understand their obligations. That is the hope and I hope that it comes about. However whether fewer people will now take on tax accountants and take less advice as a result of this legislation remains to be seen. The vast majority of people will probably not wade their way through the one two three four five volumes and now the Supplementary Order Paper in looking at their particular issue. But I do think that this legislation is an important piece of work. It is a huge piece of work as has been pointed out that goes right back to the 1990s and to the previous National Government which began the whole process. 
We have had a number of stages. The first stage was the reordering of the whole Act in order to get that into place. The second stage was a partial rewrite of the core provisions. The third stage in which further parts were rewritten was completed in 2004 as the previous speaker has just said. Today’s bill rewrites the remaining parts of the Act and this is the fourth and final stage. It has been an interesting process whereby an advisory panel has worked with the industry. Bearing in mind that there were no policy issues to be raised it was simply a case of rewriting if you like what was already in the Income Tax Act and transferring that into modern plain language. 
Any policy issue was left to one side and rightly so; it was not the time and place to have the policy debate. I was a bit disappointed in the Opposition spokesperson on finance Bill English who kind of wandered into that debate. I will not really respond to that. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: I thought it was shameful. 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: Well in fact it was shameful because we agreed that this legislation is not supposed to be controversial and we agreed that it is not about policy. 
I could easily get into asking exactly what National’s tax policy is and asking who would be worse off who would be better off and what would be cut in order to fund it. I will avoid asking those questions because this is neither the time nor the place for that kind of discussion.