Edmonds BarbaraHon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you Mr Chair. I want to continue my questioning in relation to the global anti-base erosion (GloBE) rules and really these are probably the last couple of questions I have in relation to that part of Part 2. Just for Part 2 for the GloBE rules—unless you want me to recount this again to the committee because the members over there kept interjecting and they must have missed my first couple of speeches—Hon Member: No we're just waiting for some new material. Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: You want me to continue? So if I go to clause 71D clause 71D for that member over there allows—there was a change that was made in an explicit reference to section 91C of the Tax Administration Act giving the commissioner the power to make binding rulings on the applied GloBE rules. So this is quite an important change that was made and I want to ask the Minister for the policy intention around the particular change around binding rulings. There are a number of different rulings that taxpayers can apply for and the tax rulings basically are the commissioner's view and they can provide certainty for that particular taxpayer whether it's a public ruling or whether it's a binding ruling on one specific taxpayer. Basically it's certainty around the tax treatment of a particular arrangement or a particular treatment of a way that a taxpayer has basically said I'm going to treat X like Y. Is that all right?" to the Commissioner of Inland Revenue. So there is a new binding ruling power that has now been given to these multinational enterprises and the thing that I wanted to ask the Minister is whether—and it's something that we in the select committee probably should have picked up. Given the value in the threshold in which these multinational enterprises actually enter into this regime is quite expensive—basically €750 million—has the Minister received any advice from officials or asked officials for any advice around the actual application fee if there is any form of binding ruling? These are multinational enterprises who have significant amounts of money and to basically do a binding ruling on—as the House would have heard earlier today—the different tests that a multinational enterprise has to step through I would consider that that would take up a lot of resource for Inland Revenue for that significant enterprises unit. I do understand that under the coalition agreement with one of their parties they are going to increase audit and investigations and provide extra funding for them but I would have thought that the binding rulings which are actually held through another part of Inland Revenue—if I can remember rightly it was just sort of like the office of the chief tax counsel. I don't know if that's the name of the title in law. Was there any consideration given to increasing the fees for that binding ruling given the large amount of quantity and volume of money that is basically just the entry test to get into it? Obviously these multinational enterprises will be earning a lot of money across the world so has there been any advice that the Minister has asked for from officials as to whether the actual application fees for binding rulings should be increased? I'll ask the Minister that particular question and then my second question actually goes to the discretionary penalties. So the discretionary penalties were I think around $100000 and the select committee had basically debated around—you know that seemed like a large amount of money. But again we fell on the aspect that the multinational enterprises are quite large multinational companies and entities. So included as part of the bill there was an empowering assessment provision for discretionary penalties in clauses 71B 72C and 72D. Again I just wanted to just ask the Minister because in select committee yes we do have access to officials but it's something that has probably come out just through this particular debate and in speaking about the difficulty of the test to get into this regime. Has the Minister actually looked at a different type of scaling or a different type of—you know if their enterprise revenue is like over $1 billion—CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Could I invite the member to make the links through to Part 2 because parts of this are linking through to Part 3. But if there are links it would be good for the committee to know. Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: So just the question for the Minister is whether he has looked at the scaling of those penalties because the select committee did introduce—it was OK with $100000. But I ask whether the Minister has received any advice from officials around the scaling of those penalties."