Robertson Grant: Taxation (Annual Rates for 2015-16 Research and Development and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Taxation (Annual Rates for 2015-16 Research and Development and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8450. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Iwant to make just a brief contribution as well to support my colleague Clayton Cosgrove’s amendment introducing a new clause 254B to deal with the issue as we have previously discussed of what happens to those small-business people in particular who run their businesses essentially via a premises that is a unit title within a body corporate. Most of us will be able to picture the kind of business. I know of one. I used to be a tenant in a building that was a body corporate down on Lambton Quay. It contains a number of businesses. There is a shoe store in it there is a key engraver and a repairer. These are people who are often small-business people whose premises they do not own themselves but they are the unit title holder within a body corporate.What this clause of the bill aimed to do was to create some consistency around the rules of GST registering for bodies corporate. There have been a couple of legal cases that have changed the law. It means that there has been an inconsistency in interpretation between how the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) treats bodies corporate in terms of GST and the decisions of the court. We support the principle of that approach. It is important that there is consistency in terms of GST treatment.What Mr Cosgrove led the Government to do by writing to it was to assess how to deal with people in this situation who looking back on their business expenses would normally have been able to claim GST input credits on their legitimate business activities—to enable them to do that in the spirit of a transitional part of the law. Both sides of the House are now in agreement that that was a gap that was not brought to the attention of the Finance and Expenditure Committee—it should have been. This process of discussion around the treatment of bodies corporate for GST has been the subject of to-ing and fro-ing between IRD and tax practitioners for some time so it was of some surprise to members of the select committee to learn afterwards that this gap had suddenly been identified.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: It was a surprise to the Government.GRANT ROBERTSON: Well it was a surprise to the Government until Mr Cosgrove let it know about it. So we reached the point where yes there was an agreement that there was a problem here.The issue is the date from which the small businesses concerned can continue to make their claims. The Government has proposed in Supplementary Order Paper 129 a date of 26 February 2016—that you can be claiming on services before that date. Mr Cosgrove has proposed the date of 1 April 2016. My contribution here is to ask the Government what on earth it thinks it is doing choosing the date of 26 February 2015 because what we have been told is that that date has been chosen because it is the date of the introduction of the bill. Well quite frankly you may as well have asked Mr Cosgrove his birth date and chosen that date as the day be it any more—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I won’t tell it.GRANT ROBERTSON: Halloween did you say? Yes I think it is possibly Halloween. Very appropriate. The date of introduction of a bill is completely irrelevant.Why does the date of introduction matter? Who knows what is going to happen to a piece of legislation when it is introduced to Parliament? It may be voted up; it may be voted down by Parliament. The date of introduction means nothing whatsoever. Is it some assumption by the Government that it is all-powerful and that the moment that it introduces a bill it effectively becomes law—that everybody reads it and says: “OK that’s now what the situation will be and we must obey these new tax laws.”?There is nothing in the process of Parliament that would support using an arbitrary date like the introduction date. I would defy members of the Government to tell me when it has ever occurred that the date of introduction is somehow regarded as the date by which taxpayers must obey a new law. As we are seeing right now tax bills get significant amendment as they go through the House. Every tax bill since I have been a member of this House has seen significant changes large Supplementary Order Papers—Dr David Clark: There’s a correlation there.GRANT ROBERTSON: That is right. It is all about me Dr Clark. Every tax bill has seen large Supplementary Order Papers being made.How can the Government justify choosing this date? If this is actually about being fair to small businesses that are now dealing with a change in process with different treatment for bodies corporate—to need to make a series of decisions about whether those bodies corporate have registered and what that means—I think the Government needs to reconsider and support Mr Cosgrove’s amendment because it is fairer.