English Bill: Income Tax Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
English Bill: Income Tax Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:641;Page:11271] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I think this must be the largest single question that the Committee will debate in this parliamentary session. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Ever. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Apparently it is the largest single question ever. Anyone who is listening to this might wonder why the whole of the Income Tax Bill is being debated as one question. The reason is that at least in the redrafting of the Income Tax Act there is no particularly strong disagreement. This is a project that goes back I think some 10 years perhaps further. It may even go back to the time when I had a brief and glorious reign as the Minister of Revenue or in fact to before that time so it has been a long time coming. 
The idea of having transparent tax legislation that can be understood by a wider range of people than just those well-educated experts was always a noble idea. I am not totally convinced that this bill achieves that end not because of any lack of intent or capacity on the part of those who drafted it but simply because the legislation is very complicated because the situations the legislation is trying to deal with are very complicated. That complexity arises from people trying to minimise their tax legislation so rules have to be written that tell them it is not worth trying too hard. 
In this discussion National members generally will be supporting the Committee stage of this bill because we believe that it will make our tax law more readable—or at least more understandable. But this bill comes at a time when the substance of our tax law itself is headed in the other direction towards greater complexity. The discussion of the bill will also raise a point of political contention around the use to which the new Income Tax Act is put. There are different views in the House on how extensively people should be taxed and on the stewardship of the current Government of the tax system and how it regards that system. 
There is a different point of view from the Opposition. I suppose that difference can be best summed up by the Prime Minister’s description of what the Government regards as its policy for the fourth term. When she was asked what the Government wants to do for its fourth term her comments were directly relevant to the Income Tax Bill. She said: “Well it took us a while to build up the kitty for Working for Families and early childhood education and it took us a while to build up the kitty for”—I cannot remember what the other thing was— 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: Interest-free student loans. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
:—“interest-free student loans. There will be new things we’ll want to do but we’re not sure what they are.” 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: We’re building the kitty. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: They are building the kitty and this is the kitty building tool—the Income Tax Bill. It actually will not matter how clearly written it is. It is being used for one purpose only and that is to gather revenue for a Labour Government that is struggling to retain the confidence of the House struggling to execute a legislative programme and struggling to hold Government support. 
It has now become clear that the Government sees its primary function as the distribution of money taken off other people by the Income Tax Act. In that respect this piece of legislation is absolutely central to the reason for the existence of the current Government not just because of the constitutional significance but because of the way Government members think about it. That is why the Government has until the last Budget been very reluctant to give away any tax revenue on the simple basis that it believes it can use it better than any of those people out there. That is a view shared by some commentators—in my view erroneously. They believe that if the Government leaves a tax dollar in the hands of an ordinary New Zealand household that household’s inclination is to waste it. The use of the tax dollar by the Government is just as important as the way in which it is raised. Would it not be terrific if we could apply as much clarity to the spending of Government money as this bill does to the raising of it?