Adams Amy: Taxation (Business Tax Measures) Bill — Third Reading 
Adams Amy: Taxation (Business Tax Measures) Bill — Third Reading 
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AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 I am rising to take what I believe is the final call in the third reading of the Taxation (Business Tax Measures) Bill. As a relatively new member of the House I imagine that speaking last on the third reading of a bill particularly one that has passed through the House in reasonably quick time as this one has might not be an enviable task on the grounds that a lot of what one could say about the bill has been said. A lot of it has been said by me I must admit in previous speeches. But far from being put off I am in fact delighted and proud to be speaking on this bill. 
I am delighted to see that we will pass this bill through its third reading today because this bill despite the bleating from the other side of the House will look after the engine room of our economy. When we talk about business we need to remember that far and away the vast majority of business in this country is not carried out by the big top-end-of-town companies. It is carried out by the mum selling clothes from home over the Internet and by the guys working in the garage fixing cars. It is carried out by the businesses struggling to stay alive and keep going employing few staff putting everything they have into the business and working 60 70 or 80 hours a week. Those are the businesses we need to be supporting. Those are the businesses that will get us through the recession and those are the sorts of businesses that this bill targets. 
This bill cuts right to where the National Government needs to be focusing when we talk about looking after our economy. The National Government is looking at the whole of the economy. This bill though goes straight to those small enterprises. As I have said before as the representative from Selwyn where most of our businesses are in that category I am absolutely delighted to play a part in getting this bill through the House. 
I do want to acknowledge and I think it is fair to do so the whakapapa of the bill and its genesis under the previous Government—well certainly many parts of the bill had their genesis under the previous Government. I do think it is fair to acknowledge that and I know the point has been made before. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Well done! 
AMY ADAMS 
: It is fair; the bill did have its origins under the previous Government. But—and there is a but as is often the case—we need to emphasise that this bill as drafted introduced and delivered by the National-led Government goes a lot further. It goes a lot further than the provisions that were taken out of the Labour bill. Mr Burns can keep his scorecard if he thinks that is appropriate. If he wants to tote up the number of initiatives for and against that is up to him. Frankly the quantum is of more interest to me. 
 It is not about how many points are on his side and how many are on ours; it is about the quantum and how much this measure will put into the economy. It is about how much stimulus we will get and how many businesses will make the decision to keep their doors open because they are not having the lifeblood sucked out of them by unnecessary cash-flow costs and compliance time. That is where the National-led Government has taken this bill ahead in leaps and bounds from what we previously saw. This bill goes considerably further. 
Mr Burns talks about this bill as representing a missed opportunity. Well if the bill is a missed opportunity the way it is what would it have been many many times smaller under the Labour Government? We have taken what was begun and we have made it better. 
Nathan Guy 
: Where are the Supplementary Order Papers? 
AMY ADAMS 
: That is right. Furthermore the other point we need to recognise is that the bill may have originated under the previous Government but the National-led Government will deliver it. 
We have heard this point made before on this side of the House but it bears repeating. Who cares who dreamt up the bill? Does anyone really think the public of New Zealand are interested in knowing who introduced the bill? No. They want to know who is delivering it to them. And who is delivering it to them? The National-led Government is delivering it. How long has it taken us? It has not taken us years; it has taken us a very small number of months right at the beginning of our term. 
Let us just reflect as we talk about that on the fact that this bill reduces the tax burden on business. We know that the Labour Government took mere days to raise taxes and 9 years to even start talking about cutting them. That is how much that Government cared about supporting business and simplifying the tax system—that is the truth. Let us get real about this. This Government the National-led Government is delivering the bill and it is the National-led Government that small business is thanking right now for getting on and doing it. 
When the speakers on the other side of the House keep going on and on and asking whether this bill is the big idea perhaps they could pause the histrionics hand-wringing and arm-waving for a while and open their eyes and ears. If they did they would see that it is going on all around them. This is not it—this is not it. I do not know how much clearer I can make it. This bill is one part of a large-scale response that this Government is delivering to the people of New Zealand. Members have heard about the rolling maul but it does not seem to have sunk in. We are not telling those members that this is our response to the recession; we are telling them that this is necessary it is being delivered it will make a difference and most important it is part of a huge range of initiatives that this Government is delivering. 
The stimulus package that we are delivering to this economy is we know in the top five in the OECD—the top five. That is not insignificant by any measure. 
 What we are doing though is bringing it about in a number of small steps and we are working on more initiatives all the time—and we need to remember that. 
The bill is a business bill that addresses business tax issues focusing on the small sector. As I have said before I have been a small-business owner. I have owned many small businesses and I have advised many hundreds of small businesses. I know what the reality of life is for those businesses; I know how difficult they find the environment they are currently operating in; and I know from my hours days weeks and months spent campaigning how many businesses have said to me leading up to the election that if Labour got back in they would shut down or move to Australia. Every member on this side of the House will have had the same experience because the system those businesses were operating under was killing them. It was sucking the lifeblood out of those businesses. There was too much red tape and too much compliance. They spent more time filling in forms paying taxes jumping through hoops answering surveys and complying with the bureaucracy to get any business done. That is why they could not cope and why they were going to leave. That was nothing to do with the recession. If these businesses were finding it hard to stay alive before imagine how hard they are finding it now with all that compliance and the recession hitting them full in the face. What we are doing—and doing urgently as a matter of priority—is starting to address that bureaucracy the red tape the compliance and the unnecessary hurdles. In this bill the focus is on doing that through adjustments to the tax system. 
The House heard my colleague David Bennett in his excellent speech talk about the fact that this bill delivers incentives. That is not a word we hear very often from the other side of the House. This bill is setting up incentives. We are incentivising businesses to get on and be productive. We are not punishing people who try to get ahead. We are incentivising them and that is something that we need to hear more about if we are going to grow productivity in this country. That is essential if we are going to keep jobs keep our businesses here and keep our businesses strong prospering growing and employing New Zealanders. That is what we have to do and what this bill does. 
The bill does it through a number of initiatives as we have heard detailed. We have heard Craig Foss talk about the uplift provisions and the fact that that will pump an extra half a billion dollars alone into the economy—that is half a billion dollars worth of stimulus just through the uplift provision. We have heard about the changes to the GST system which will mean that a business will not have to comply with GST on under $60000 of turnover unless that business wants to. More important businesses that are registered can now take the choice to deregister if that would be easier for them. In addition to that they have more option to send in their returns 6-monthly and as we have heard—and I have talked about it before because it is important—businesses will not have to switch to the invoice basis for registration until they hit $2 million worth of turnover. That threshold has gone up from $1.3 million and that alone makes a huge difference. When one hits that threshold—and I have been in this position—it hurts and it is a serious cash-flow hurdle for businesses to get over. One is paying tax on money one does not even have. That hurts and it can be many hundreds of thousands of dollars. 
The other thing the bill does is try to introduce some more simplicity into the tax system which I will always encourage and support. Our tax system should be as simple as possible. One of the areas that the bill does this in is clearing up the rules around legal deductibility for small businesses. They will not have to sit there and go through long-winded processes to work out which of their legal expenses are deductible. If a business spends under $10000 on lawyers within a year it can be deducted. It is simple it is easy it involves less time it makes it clear-cut and it means less time for the Inland Revenue Department having to go through and check it. It works all round and is exactly the sort of silly hurdle that we need to be removing. 
Bill read a third time.