17 May 2006
No Tax Cuts This Year
Ahead of tomorrow’s Budget, the Government introduced legislation today confirming no change to the tax rates for 2007.
The Government’s confirmation of no tax cuts for 2007 is not a surprise and was signalled by the Prime Minister and the
Minister of Finance, says Ernst & Young tax partner Geof Nightingale, however, the approach is in stark contrast to the significant reductions in
personal taxes by Australia announced in its budget last week.
Also contained in the Bill is the detail on the radical changes to the taxation of investment and savings due to come
into effect on 1 April 2007 in conjunction with KiwiSaver.
Mr Nightingale says the Government continues to be vigilant in protecting its tax base where it thinks there are holes.
The Bill proposes measures to stop companies claiming foreign tax losses in New Zealand, reducing withholding taxes on
dividends to foreign owners and to stop individuals from using salary sacrifice into superannuation savings to reduce
personal taxes.
“In a sign that the battle with the minority of fraudulent taxpayers is heating up, Inland Revenue’s already broad
powers of entry to premises and inspection of documents will be expanded to allow it seize original documents and retain
them for purposes such as forensic examination. Inland Revenue will also be given the right to jump straight to a tax
assessment and make tax collections without the normal dispute process if it has reasonable grounds to suspect fraud.
Inland Revenue will need to use these new powers with great care and make sure that it does not apply them to ordinary
honest taxpayers.
“On the other hand the Bill contains a number of taxpayer friendly measures,” says Mr Nightingale.
“It’s good to see some certainty proposed for the tax treatment of geothermal wells. This will remove a potential
discouragement to businesses investing geothermal power generation.
“Barriers to attracting talented Australian workers to New Zealand will be further lowered by the proposal to exempt
them from the taxing embrace of New Zealand’s foreign investment fund rules on their Australian superannuation schemes.
“Proposals to expand the zero-rating of financial services in the area of actively managed equity investments will be
welcomed by the industry as it will remove another niggling GST cascade.”
The Bill highlights the need for further tax penalty and interest reform, according to Mr Nightingale.
“The Bill contains a large number of fix-ups arising from recent tax law changes and the rewrite of the income tax act.
While it’s great to see the Government identifying and correcting these errors it brings home how complex tax law is
these days. If the Government can make mistakes due to complexity when it writes the law, then it’s understandable that
taxpayers can get it wrong from time to time when following the law. However, the big difference is that when taxpayers
get it wrong they get penalised and charged high rates of interest.”
ENDS