Taxation (Income Tax Rate and Other Amendments) Bill

Mōrena, members. When we suspended last night, we were debating Part 1 of the Taxation (Income Tax Rate and Other Amendments) Bill, and the debate was on clauses 3 to 31, Income tax rate amendments.

Thank you, Mr Chair; very generous of you. Yes, we were having a very interesting debate last night, and I just want to acknowledge that the Minister who is in the chair, the Hon David Parker, has returned from last night. So thank you very much.

There are still quite a few issues we want to traverse, but I want to particularly ask the Minister about the level of consultation in preparing this bill. From what I understand from reading the documentation, it has been very, very minor—there have only been two or three parties, from what I understand, that have been consulted, and, in fact, not consulted on the whole of the bill. But I’m hoping the Minister will provide a more fulsome response. I understand the nature of the consultation that was involved was a sort of a general talk to people but without going through all the issues, and particularly some of the issues that we’re going to cover in Part 2.

I wonder if this is the case—whether that absence of consultation has led to this requirement, which is most unusual, for Inland Revenue to conduct a post-implementation review of the proposed information requirements and all that sort of stuff in 2021. I would have thought that most bills, if they’d gone through a consultation process prior to being introduced, particularly in urgency, would have had some of that work done. That, of course, is the advantage of taking it through the select committee, but, as the Minister said last night, the reason for the urgency is the IT system that is required in various organisations to be able to meet the requirement to have this in place by 1 April.

So if we accept the Minister’s view that the IT is driving this urgency of the bill, what is the nature of the consultation to date, and what is going to be the consultation during 2021, and are we going to actually have a proper process where this bill is going to be reviewed and looked at? Thank you very much.

I move, That the question be now put.

The question is that Andrew Bayly’s amendment inserting new clauses 15B and 15C set out on Supplementary Order Paper 2 be agreed to.

The question is that Andrew Bayly’s amendment to clause 16 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 1 be agreed to.