Mr Dunne says the tax is about "making sure that anything paid by way of salary or salary equivalent is treated fairly from a tax point of view". Photo / NZPA
Revenue Minister Peter Dunne says his proposed tax on employer-provided carparks is about fairness and he questions why opponents have only now challenged the plan.
The proposal to tax employers on inner-city carparks they provide to employees has drawn concentrated criticism from a well organised lobby group comprising an unlikely
alliance of employer groups, advertising agencies, carparking companies and the Unite union.
The FBT (Fringe Benefit Tax) Action Group argues that the tax would take 110 minutes of an accountant's time to administer each employer- provided carpark each year. That, it says, adds up to a total compliance bill of $30 million a year across the almost 200,000 carparks in the Auckland and Wellington CBDs the tax would apply to.
That would far outweigh the $17 million a year benefit to the Inland Revenue, the group says.
But Mr Dunne says the tax is about "making sure that anything paid by way of salary or salary equivalent is treated fairly from a tax point of view".
