Cunliffe David: Taxation (International Taxation Life Insurance and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee 
Cunliffe David: Taxation (International Taxation Life Insurance and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:656;Page:6008] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to join the discussion in Committee of Part 2 of the Taxation (International Taxation Life Insurance and Remedial Matters) Bill and in doing so I will first reflect on the Minister’s closing comments in respect of Part 1 on the theme of the timetable for this bill which apply equally to this part. It is absolutely true as the Minister has described that a number of substantive provisions of this bill including issues such as payroll giving and tax pooling rules which are the subject of this part have been—transcending the change of Government—debated in the public domain over some considerable period of time. There have been discussion documents and the generic tax policy process has been in evidence. That is all a good thing. I would not want our earlier comments about the rushed nature of the bill to be misunderstood in that regard. 
But having conceded that point I hope that the Minister would also concede that in hindsight the deadline for the report back of the bill in this Parliament once the change of implementation dates had been agreed could have been extended. The pressure on officials on the independent tax advisers and on the committee itself was extreme. That is not to ask for sympathy for poor old politicians. We know how far we would get with that— 
Amy Adams 
: Not very far! 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Not very far no because as the public knows we all get rather larger allowances than the chief executive of Telecom New Zealand and work only 3 hours a day! That is a long 3 hours; there is nothing longer than tax legislation to measure time. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Are you doing overtime? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: We are doing overtime today for which we are not paid time and a half. 
Amy Adams 
: We’re not paid at all! 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: No. Members opposite have no doubt done the maths and worked out what their hourly rate is but I digress. 
The fact remains that there is—even in this part that amounts to about 30 percent of the text of this doorstop—an incredible amount of detail that politicians because they live such exciting lives find it within their responsibilities to have to scrutinise. As the public may know select committees are the places where we join together in a relatively non-partisan kind of a way and work through the detail on the basis of advice. So the long and the short of it is that I stand by the earlier comments that that process could have been better. We were under such time pressure that Part 2 could have benefited from further discussion. 
Let us turn to some of the substantive provisions. There is general agreement—and Labour will be supporting the part—that the payroll giving provisions are meritorious in general and should be supported. Payroll giving is the idea that employees can nominate a set of charities for whom direct deductions can be made through their payroll process on an ongoing basis—that is only to be commended. New Zealanders are generous people. We care about our neighbours broadly defined we give a reasonable percentage of our incomes towards overseas aid and New Zealanders come forward for everything from the Daffodil Day appeal to telethon and to a whole range of other charities. Payroll giving is a way of making it easy. New Zealanders can fit it once forget it and support the charity of their choice. This legislation is permissive it is not compulsory and we hope that the detail will stand the test of time. 
Similarly we support the concept of the tax pooling rules. Tax pooling is a system as the public may know that allows taxpayers to benefit from the aggregation of the unders and overs between different taxpayers who through a tax pooling agent can collect those flows into one pool and pay an aggregate on their behalf. The impact of that is that the unders and overs to a certain extent balance themselves out thereby lowering the cost of the holding capital and perhaps through timeliness also reducing any penalties that might accrue for late payment. A professional manages the tax pool there is general good notice of deadlines and the system works well both in the interests of the taxpayer and of the department that benefits from the aggregation and timely provision of those flows. 
Contained in this section of Part 2 are a bunch of rules that in detail facilitate and indeed extend the ability of taxpayers to pool their tax payments. The Finance and Expenditure Committee made a number of amendments—for example new section RP 17B(1) inserted by clause 405 and the amendments in clause 406 and so forth. The committee gave reasonable attention to those matters. We turn then to the subset of those intermediary rules that affect PAYE and I will pick that up in a further call.