Welcome to The Week in Tax!

This week, I’m joined by a former member of the Tax Working Group, ecologist economist, Marjan van den Belt.

Tell me, what was your expectation when you were asked to join the Tax Working Group?

MARJAN VAN DEN BELT:

Yes, thanks for having me on. It’s an important topic.

What were my expectations? When I got the phone call from Treasury if I wanted to be a part of the Tax Working Group, I looked at the terms of reference. To my surprise, I found this one task in there which is “How can the taxation system contribute to positive ecological and environmental outcomes?”

Now, I thought that was a very enlightened task to be included along with, of course, the capital gains tax that was clearly on the table. A lot of exclusions were on there already – no wealth tax, no inheritance tax, no owner-occupied housing, if we wanted to talk about capital gains tax. A lot of exclusions.

It was clear it was going to be a tip-toeing type of dance, but you wouldn’t expect anything else if you take a seat on the Tax Working Group. 

Yes, I was quite excited about the opportunity. 

TERRY: 

Excellent!

How did you find the process? This is a very diverse group that we came across. I mean, it was the most diverse Tax Working Group I’ve seen, and so there’s a lot of interesting people on there – very different people such as Hinerangi and Kirk and Bill who are all from outside the tax world. 

Previously, it’s basically these Tax Working Groups were tax nerds completely. But, this time, there’s much broader and a much more diverse group involved. 

How was that as a work group working? How did you find working as a group and the whole process in being involved in something that’s quite horrendously complex as tax – the whole tax system?

MARJAN: 

Yes, Michael Cullen used to introduce his team as half of the group knows everything about tax and the other half knows nothing about tax, but they know about everything else. 

I really have to commend this government for taking a much broader approach to this. It is a systemic challenge that we have at hand. You cannot resolve that with the same – dare I say – rather narrow perspective at the margin from tax experts, and that’s not the way the change is going to happen. It was quite exciting to have these conversations, and we had some real robust conversations. It was very good.

For the rest of the transcript go tohttps://baucher.tax/marjan-ven-den-belt-on-environmental-taxes/

Marjan van den Belt on environmental taxes

Terry's guest on the podcast today is Deborah Russell, MP with whom he co-authored Tax and Fairness book.  They dig into how the government and parliament legislate tax policy.  Deborah speaks on tax issues in parliament and explains the different ways that 

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The Inland Revenue IT upgrade - tax agents felt less-involved than they could
Next week's budget - MPs get prior announcements an hour beforehand
The living standards framework - based on Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's work
And a prize draw....

Deborah Russell MP on tax legislation and policy

Terry Baucher reviews the New Zealand budget for 2019.
Terry was part of the Budget lockup in Wellington yesterday and he gives us his insights and observations into the 2019 "Wellbeing" budget in The Week in Tax podcast.

The differences in approach to planning

The budget looks beyond GDP to the 4 "capitals" of wellbeing in the Living Standards Framework
The "whole of Government" approach to solving these challenges

Terry reviews the Wellbeing Budget

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2019 - 7-12 This Week In Tax

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Special International Podcast Day edition 

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OECD on taxing energy
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Special International Podcast Day - observations on tax in the UK, taxing energy

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OECD proposals shake up international tax, Budget Surplus, tax evasion and changing tax codes

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Tax changes how business and people live and work.  Each week we discuss tax news and how it affects you.  Tax is an important policy lever for Government and cross-border tax for global corporations is an issue for Tax and Fairness.

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