Gilmore Aaron: Taxation (Annual Rates Trans-Tasman Savings Portability KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second Reading 
Gilmore Aaron: Taxation (Annual Rates Trans-Tasman Savings Portability KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:664;Page:12189] 
AARON GILMORE (National) 
: 
 It is a great pleasure to follow that invigorating speech from the wonderful revenue spokesperson from the Opposition Stuart Nash. This Taxation (Annual Rates Trans-Tasman Savings Portability KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill contains a whole lot of issues and tidy-up matters and I will focus on a couple of the remedial matters. We are a Government unlike others in the world that is making the tax system simpler and easier and reducing costs to people and I think they are really neat things. 
A couple of good provisions in this bill have not been touched on by previous speakers and I think they are worth mentioning. One of those is the exemption from gift duty for the gifting of assets to city council organisations. We had a couple of submitters who were very keen to make sure that that measure went through. This arose when there were a number of organisations gifting certain assets to local government in particular which would result in gift duty. That really was not a sensible situation and it discouraged the gifting of assets to local government. So there is an exemption in the legislation that allows for transfers to be made to local or central government. There have been some quite high-profile cases where if this measure had not been passed there would have been some particular issues and problems that would have discouraged sensible gifting arrangements. 
The other thing I want to touch on is the issue of the branch equivalent tax account debits—or BETA debits. For people like me who happen to be qualified accountants this is quite an exciting aspect of the tax law. But for most people this is something that makes them shake their heads and roll their eyes. I can see Mr Garrett doing the same. These things are quite important because they allow for the offsets that exist when companies are investing overseas. Some other changes have been made in order to simplify tax law so the need for this particular aspect of tax law has been removed as a result of this bill. I think that is a really good thing. Again this is a Government that believes in simplification and that was a good step forward. 
We had a very good chairperson through this select committee process in Craig Foss—and I note that Mr Nash over there passed over him in his speech. He is a wonderful MP from the Tukituki—a beautiful part of the world in the Hawke’s Bay. I thought we had wonderful work from the officials who tried to grapple with some very complicated matters. I know that tax is never the most exciting topic at the best of times but they made it interesting enough for members who did not quite have a tax background to get their heads around it and understand the importance of some of these changes and I think that is a good thing. This bill wraps up all of that stuff in a way that it can be understood and it sorts a whole lot of things out. 
I do not want to touch on anything more in particular on the tax changes. A few barbs have been thrown from the Opposition about some of the wider issues around superannuation but the issue of savings and investment is part of a journey. This bill is another step along that journey towards improving our savings rates and encouraging people with the right incentives to do a bit more and bring more savings back to New Zealand—and that has to be neat. For those Kiwis coming home to New Zealand—and there have been hundreds of thousands of them coming home in the last 18 months under a John Key - led Government—this bill will allow them to bring their savings through with KiwiSaver and I think that is a good step forward to bolster our private savings effort. 
I finish off by talking about an issue that is quite exciting—the continuing exemption for offshore oil drilling operators. I know that there is some fear and loathing about that but I think that that has the potential to bring significant funds into New Zealand and that has to be a wonderful thing. Thank you very much.