GST designers honoured

GST designers honoured

The team which revolutionised New Zealand’s taxation system will have their efforts recognised at a parliamentary reception tomorrow night (November 16) to open Twenty Years of GST: the Best Path Forward (Nov 16-18), a major international conference on the implications of the Goods and Services Tax.

The advisory panel that designed and implemented New Zealand’s GST will be presented with commemorative plaques incorporating a coin embossed with the original GST logo and paper made from shredded photocopies of the original GST documents. The plaques were designed by Whitireia Polytechnic applied arts graduates Sarah Philp and Rosie White. The presentation will occur at 6pm on November 16 in Parliament’s Grand Hall and media are invited to attend.

The group includes Sir Roger Douglas, the Minister of Finance who introduced GST, the Hon Peter Dunne who was member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee member from 1984 to 1987, and prominent businessman Alan Martin

Other Advisory Panel members include: Chair, Malcolm McCaw; Richard Green, member of the Advisory Panel on Goods and Services Tax; Jeff Todd, Director, New Zealand GST Co-ordinating Office; Marilyn Goddard, New Zealand GST Co-ordinating Office; David Henry, former Commissioner of Inland Revenue; Graham Holland, former Commissioner of Inland Revenue; Ian Dickson, The Treasury; Carl Bakker, The Treasury; Graham Tubb, Inland Revenue; Bruce Quigley, Australian Tax Office, seconded to IRD; Michael Evans, Australian Tax Office, seconded to IRD; and Philippe Leloir, Customs.

Organised by the Centre for Accounting, Governance & Taxation Research at Victoria University of Wellington, in collaboration with the Taxation Law and Policy Research Institute at Melbourne’s Monash University, Twenty Years of GST: the Best Path Forward is part of a larger, five - part GST Project; including a workshop for Pacific Island tax administrators in Wellington on November 20, undertaken to encourage research into the implications of GST in both a New Zealand and Global context.

Head of Victoria’s School of Accounting & Commercial Law, Professor Keitha Dunstan, said that GST was controversial at the time but now seems to be well accepted.

“As global initiatives to reduce trade tariffs force countries to consider new forms of revenue raising, value added tax has emerged as one of the most important tax and revenue issues facing the world today.”

International speakers at the conference include:

• Canadian, Professor Neil Brooks, who is a strong advocate of financing a robust welfare state and is critical of the impact GST/VAT tax has on welfare systems.

Satya Poddar, a Canadian of Indian extraction, currently based in New Delhi, a world expert on India’s fast developing economy and its effects on Western countries.

Ben Terra, professor of law at University of Amsterdam is an expert on the widespread fraud occurring throughout the EU.

For more information including a full list of the 26 speakers and 12 commentators, please visit http://www.vuw.ac.nz/sacl/about/gst2006/index.aspx

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