Bennett David: Taxation (Land Information and Offshore Persons Information) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBennett David: Taxation (Land Information and Offshore Persons Information) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 08 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6311. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): That last speech was one of rhetoric but no substance and it is typical from that member Grant Robertson in his finance role. If Labour members had so many concerns about holes in this legislation surely in the Finance and Expenditure Committee they would have made those known and they would have sought to have them adjusted. They did not do so. They do not see any particular holes because it is all rhetoric that they are talking about. When we talk about the main home test—that is the exemption for ordinary New Zealanders that is in this bill and will be in the Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential land) Bill as well—we have got to look at it from the perspective of the ordinary New Zealand purchaser as well and we do not want to put undue compliance on ordinary New Zealanders when they are purchasing properties. The register notion that the previous speaker talked about is a very Soviet-era type of approach where everything and anything that anybody does has to go through Government agencies before it can be approved.This bill is one that sets the information flows for the Government around those land transactions—the purchase of property—but that also sets some rules around what some purchasers have to engage with and deliver. The first thing is that buyers and sellers will be required to provide IRD numbers at the time the property is transferred. This tax information will be provided to Land Information New Zealand as part of the conveyancing process and then forwarded to the Inland Revenue Department. People who are tax residents in another jurisdiction will also be required to provide their foreign equivalent of an IRD number.The second part of the bill requires offshore persons as defined in the bill to have a New Zealand bank account before obtaining an IRD number. That is the second requirement. This ensures that offshore persons are subjected to New Zealand’s anti - money-laundering rules and it is an important part of the reasons behind this bill.There are some clauses in the bill that were the subject of some submissions. I think that 13 submissions were received by the committee and some of those presented were around the “offshore persons” definition the “main home” definition and suchlike. This is tax legislation that cannot be overly prescriptive. It needs to give the ability for the Inland Revenue Department to have some discretion in how it interprets some of that wording. They are new tests in some ways but at the same time they are tests that enable the Inland Revenue Department to be able to apply the principles and policies that this bill seeks to achieve through its application of the meaning of those tests rather than be totally explicit in this legislation which is something that tax legislation fails on many times because people just use those explicit definitions as a mechanism to get around it. There is a little bit of broadness in the way it is structured around that terminology but that is to provide the Inland Revenue Department with the ability to deliver the policy that this legislation seeks to achieve which is the information around IRD numbers and around those offshore persons and at the same time not putting undue requirements on New Zealanders who are buying their main home and who are exempt from those requirements.This is a good bill and it will be part of a suite of legislation that will deliver in this area. Thank you.