New Zealand is a very charitable country, and at its second reading, the Charities Amendment Bill will be receiving New Zealand First's support.
We have so many people willing to put their hard-earned money, and their precious time into supporting genuine charities.
It would be great to ensure that organisations claiming to be charitable, actually are. A lot of people have questions about a church leader buying a brand new $150,000 car, months after a first class round-the-world trip, and these cases, of ridiculously high salaries and huge expense accounts go completely against the grain of why charities exist.
We, at New Zealand First are calling for a review of what constitutes charitable status. This current bill does not go that far.
It does have provisions for charities to be struck off, for failing to provide information requested by Inland Revenue or similar official entities within 18 months.
But the most important element of this bill is to make it an offence for a person who has been convicted of tax evasion, to hold a position within a charitable organisation. Of course that makes sense - if you're a tax evader, we certainly don't want you operating in an organisation with tax exempt status.
However it is quite ironic, that this blue government is finally seeing that perhaps tax evaders shouldn't be in the mix, while doing nothing about putting a stop to the huge problem we have in this country with tax avoidance - immorally using the law to get out of paying their fair share of tax.
It's costing New Zealand big time. We have 20 multinational companies who collectively, paid just $1.8 million in tax in 2014, while recording nearly $10 billion in annual sales in New Zealand. That's a tax rate of 0.018%. But all of their directors would still be eligible to be part of a Charitable Trust.
We, at New Zealand First, support fixing the laws around charitable organisations, but are also strongly calling for the tax system to be fixed. It's simply not right that they can make huge sums of money here, without paying their fair share back into the country like the rest of us do.
