Foss Craig: Income Tax Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Foss Craig: Income Tax Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:641;Page:11282] 
CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) 
: 
 It is always a pleasure to help to wake up listeners to the radio after the previous speaker. He will be interested to know that I have found some very interesting facts about what goes on up north from another gentleman at a function I was at on Friday night. I look forward to discussing those with him and seeing whether those allegations are true. 
The previous speaker talked about National policy around tax affairs etc. I will ask that member some very very simple questions. What will be in the Government’s 2008 Budget? Why does the Government not release it today? Why does it not tell us and provide some certainty now for electors? Why does it not release it now? What will be in its mini-Budget after the regular Budget in 2008? Why will the Government not release that policy now? What is it doing with tax cuts now? In question time today Minister Maharey seemed to take them right off the agenda. I do not know whether Dr Cullen had actually read that part of his answer because he has been speculating wildly about tax cuts lately. I guess we can contrast that with what Mr Mallard said recently when he put Mr Goff into it. So we really do not know what the policy is in and around things to do with taxation over on the Government side of the Chamber at the moment. The moment the Government tries to get National to bring in its time frame and framework early I will ask the member to start releasing what is going to be in the 2008 Budget. 
I have been part of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. It has been a pleasure working with officials around this bill which has been 10 years or more in formulation. Along with previous speakers I give particular thanks acknowledgment and a bell to Sir Ivor Richardson for the mana he brought to our committee. We all admired his steady hand and would it not be good if we had many more like him in our Chamber today? 
As previous speakers Mr Bill English and Dr Lockwood Smith have noted the Income Tax Bill which has about 3000 pages and I think another 250-odd pages in the Supplementary Order Paper sets the framework for all things in and around income tax. I will put some numbers to that. Another previous speaker Mr Chauvel started lurching back to the previous millennium with various statistics but I think it is more relevant to talk about today and I enjoy talking about today and about ambitions for tomorrow. 
This Income Tax Bill provides the framework for over $52 billion of tax revenue per annum—$52 million. Those 3500-odd pages deal with $52 billion per annum. Fair enough; perhaps that is why the Government took 10 years to get to this point although I did note in my previous speech that it is quite amusing to read in the commentary that some issues were not addressed because of time constraints. But going back to that $52 billion and to the 10 to 12 years the bill has been in formulation I note that that figure is actually $20 billion more per annum than at the time this Government took office in 1999—$20 billion more. 
For the layman I guess that those figures are still crazy numbers with heaps of zeros behind them but I ask listeners out there and people paying attention to Parliament today to note particularly that $1 billion per week will be taken out in tax revenue in the current financial year—that is $1 billion per week. Of those $52 billion $1 billion is due purely to fiscal drag due purely to the inflation that has been seeded and bred by the unproductive spending of the current Government. Yes there was the promise of a tax break an indexation of thresholds to try to deal with that but they were put on the table and were then snatched away. The message taken by the public was that this current Government cannot be trusted one iota in all matters of taxation. We have seen time and time again that the public should ignore totally anything and everything that this current Government is talking about on the potential for tax cuts. 
I acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants and the New Zealand Law Society for their submissions to the bill. Yes the legislation is very complex and previous speakers—and the Minister indeed—have noted that. It is a bill in progress and different reasons have been given for that but I admire those two professional bodies because the more complex and the more archaic the taxation law is the more opportunity they have in their professional lives to charge their various clients to interpret the current law.