Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you Madam Chair. Great to be able to continue the call that I took last week when I do note there was quite a lot of interruption from the Government members who were clearly very keen to debate taxation. I'd like to also pick up where my colleague the Hon Dr Deborah Russell has asked a question about equity because my question for the Minister the Hon Simon Watts is about fairness. It's a word that we use a lot in relation to taxation. I think all New Zealanders and certainly all members from across the House would agree that having a fair tax system is what we're all after. And certainly knowing that the taxation rates are fair and proportionate to how much people are earning what their circumstances are how many dependants they have and so on would be really helpful.Mr Chair you'd be aware that there was a way that we could have perhaps more transparently looked at the question of fairness with the Taxation Principles Reporting Act that was introduced by the last Government. Not only did it have the elements of equity as alluded to by my colleague but it really broke fairness down into six elements. And again I'm directing these comments to the Minister because I would like to know if any of these elements have been on his mind when he's been looking at the rates. Those are things like the efficiency of the collection of tax compliance and administration—clearly when the Government is collecting taxation it needs to be able to do so in a way that minimises the compliance burden for business. And we've heard a lot about that. I certainly knew about that when I had my own small business. There needs to be integrity of the tax system and certainty and predictability. And that's a really fundamental principle—of course universally accepted—that it would be most unfair for people to embark on business ventures and enterprise without understanding with some certainty the level of compliance they need but also the level of taxation that they would be likely to expect to contribute.So there's an element of predictability but also to be flexible because there are often as we know unusual circumstances perhaps natural disasters in countries like ours or things that happen offshore to currencies and so on that require quick and nimble changes to the taxation system. So there does have to be a degree of flexibility and also to understand the nuances of different groups of people within different tax bands—so taking into account that not everybody earning the same amount of money is in the same context so therefore there needs to be some flexibility around that and of course adaptability so that the tax system can move with the times. Clearly we've seen even for example last year with GST collection there was a streamlining of the way businesses were able to produce their invoices which meant that they were more able to be done easily by the digital invoicing systems that were available.So when I look at these six tax principles they seem like a really good fair way of shining a light on what the Government's priorities are when it is setting its taxation rates. Certainly if that statute had stayed in there would have been a requirement for the Commissioner of Inland Revenue to aggregate the data and to report on it so that all New Zealanders would be able to understand what is meant by tax fairness—that fundamental question—because we know that when people know the tax system is fair they are much more likely to comply with it and they're much less likely to try and evade or avoid tax. But sadly that Act was repealed. And so now we really just have these notions of equity that Dr Deborah Russell referred to and now my questions around efficiency compliance and administration integrity certainty and predictability horizontal and vertical equity.Which of these different principles has the Minister turned his mind to? And how has he been able to make those assessments in the absence of having some kind of written data on them? It would seem to me that would have been a really helpful thing to have. I'm sure that the Minister is concerned with fairness and so as we look at these tax rates I'd like to know in the absence of that how he was able to address those questions. And a broader question really to enlighten us what does he think of when he thinks about tax fairness in the system? It is a really relevant question at the moment. There's been a lot of commentary on it in the media. There's been a lot of political discourse. Certainly as we move into questions like interest deductibility and brightline tests I think having a baseline understanding of what the Minister calls to mind and the criteria that he thinks of when he is looking at fairness in the taxation system—what is it that he bases that on and what advice has he had from officials and from other groups as to how to make determinations around fairness? Has he taken advice on any one of these particular six universally accepted criteria?Also has he considered the report that came out prior to that legislation that was eventually repealed which was the high-wealth individuals research project because that revealed a startling disparity between the effective tax rates by the super wealthy compared with other New Zealanders. And so if I recall there is a discrepancy of most New Zealanders paying an average tax rate of something like around 22 percent versus around 8 percent for those who are super rich. So my third question to the Minister is: has he actually read that report? It would be really good to know if he has read the high-wealth individuals research project which did lead in part to the legislation and to bringing those six principles of fairness into our legislative system. If he did read that report what are his views about that report and did that have any influence on the attitude and approach that he has now to the taxation rates? Did it cause him to stop and think perhaps maybe there should be adjustments? And does he see any merit in being able to get more concrete data? Because we know that taxation information in the absence of having real data is done through a series of assumptions about up taxation. What assumptions does he rely on in order to be able to make these value judgments about what's fair?So I'll leave my questions there for the Minister. I'm very keen to get an answer on each one of them.