Ardern Jacinda: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ardern Jacinda: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2468. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call because I have been reading the regulatory impact statement that relates to Part 1 of the Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill and I was looking for something quite particular. I was looking to see whether or not the Inland Revenue Department in particular had done any costings around how much it would impact on the department for it to have to redo its communications and in particular its website. Why you might ask. Well quite simply because the Inland Revenue Department’s website currently features what I would call a paper girl poster child. I am not sure whether you can see this but currently on the Inland Revenue Department website you have got a child of probably I would say roughly the age of what 13 with the title above her of “Not sure how to go about your tax?”. I have to say to the Minister in the chair Minister Dunne that now I guess that child is no longer going— 
Todd McClay 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Could the member table that iPad? I would like to have a look at it. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: If Todd McClay would like to see this online it is on the Inland Revenue Department website on its home page. That is the first thing that will come up when you go on to the website if you would like to see that. But I could suggest if the Minister would like to save some money that you could keep this as is leave the words “Not sure how to go about your tax?” and just add “Now you don’t have to.” Or perhaps we could just leave it and have it say: “It doesn’t matter how old you are or where you are we will find you.” That is essentially the change that we are seeing today.  
In lieu of the regulatory impact statement featuring the changes that the Inland Revenue Department will no doubt have to add to its communications I was interested to see that there were several options considered by the department in considering the changes to this particular tax credit. It is interesting that the first option was to replace the tax credit with a limited tax exemption and that is essentially obviously what the Minister has opted for. But I wonder how much the exemptions in his mind are going to equate to. Of the $14 million we are going to save does he have some kind of estimation as to what amount those exemptions will equate to of the $14 million the Government intends to save from making this change? And would the tax exemption apply to child modelling? I am just interested as an aside.  
Finally paragraph 25 of the regulatory impact statement says: “The second option repealing the credit with no replacement would mean large numbers of children earning small amounts of income would be pulled into the tax system.” That is why I am interested in that question Minister because if we are actually still talking about large numbers of children being pulled into the tax system because not enough are exempt then essentially you will not have achieved your intended outcome. I would be interested in the evidence that the Inland Revenue Department has generated for you on that.  
I want to come back to Part 1 and in particular new section CW 55BB in clause 4(1) which sets out the age groups that this exemption applies to. Although of course we have been leaning back on the paper boy and paper girl we are in fact talking about young people younger than 15 who could be in full-time work. I know that we assume in this country that that should not be happening and that a child should be in school but there are a significant number of 15-year-olds who get exemptions from secondary education and who are entering into work. Now obviously this will impact upon them. Of course those younger than 18—not exactly the child tax credit we were thinking of—who are in fact impacted on by all of the Minister’s welfare reforms are in many ways for all intents and purposes often treated as adults in our system rightly or wrongly. So if you are younger than 18 you are now also going to lose out on this tax credit.  
I imagine that good hard-working National members would at some point in their aspirational childhood careers have had at least one job if not multiple jobs and that they themselves have benefited from this provision previously. No doubt as the good taxpaying children that they would have been I am sure they would have paid tax and filed their tax return just like the child on the Inland Revenue Department home page Mr McClay. So in that sense we are essentially seeing yet another change that this Government’s members themselves have directly benefited from.  
How much are we saving per person in this? A couple of hundred dollars. But it is still amounting to $14 million for this Government and that is what demonstrates that we are scraping the bottom of the barrel—