Ross Jami-Lee: Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoss Jami-Lee: Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 27 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18333. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany): I wish to speak only very briefly in support of the Taxation (Annual Rates Employee Allowances and Remedial Matters) Bill. I want to touch on a couple of points. Firstly I just want to make the observation that it is a shame to see that even in a relatively benign tax bill like this Andrew Williams sought to go down that muckraking path talking about Cabinet clubs and the like. You would think that after the news media coverage on Television One and TV3 on Sunday night those members would have got the message that being nasty and muckraking is not going to help them but in the race to 20 percent they can keep doing what they want if they want.I just want to touch briefly on two parts of this bill. Firstly in relation to the accommodation allowance rules for employees that are being changed in this particular bill we did hear some submissions around boarding schools and the way in which they should treat student accommodation. I just want to put on the record the fact that the Finance and Expenditure Committee did consider those matters in quite a bit of detail. The question was around whether in a boarding school a matron’s flat of say 50 square metres sitting underneath the boarding house with lots of boys running around the boarding house in the middle of the night is worth the same amount of money as a 50 square metre piece of property down the road. The answer is probably no so the boarding schools had some issues around how they should value that piece of property within their boarding school. The committee did consider a range of options that the boarding schools wanted including at one end of the spectrum a full exemption from having to pay tax on that accommodation. Ultimately though the committee came down to the point of view that the Inland Revenue Department could issue some very detailed and helpful operational guidance to those taxpayers. We think that that will be a method by which those boarding schools and any other taxpayers in a similar situation will have some good guidance to allow them to properly assess the value of their property.The second point I also want to make briefly is around the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act in the United States. It is legislation that is very complex and has led to a lot of concern from New Zealanders who also happen to be US residents for tax purposes. The committee did give a lot of consideration to this issue as well. Ultimately though that legislation is legislation in the United States. There is a requirement for those within New Zealand to comply with their tax obligations in the United States. If we were to do nothing as a country the risk would be that institutions that have operations in the United States would be subject to a 30 percent withholding tax if there were not appropriate agreements put in place between New Zealand and the United States. So the committee came to the point of view that it was appropriate that we enable the financial institutions within New Zealand to have agreements in place that will enable them to transmit the data required by the United States. People will consent to that data being transferred by way of agreements with their own financial institution. The risk to New Zealand taxpayers in doing nothing is very high and that is why the committee could not completely ignore the issue.I commend this bill to the House. There are some good legislative changes in this bill that will be helpful for New Zealanders.