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Overview

On 12 & 13 June 2014, Inland Revenue, the Treasury and Victoria University hosted a conference:  “Tax Administration for the 21st Century”. 

The aim of the conference was to explore ways of making tax easier and reducing administration and compliance costs without sacrificing other tax policy objectives such as fairness and efficiency.  The conference encouraged attendees to share ideas and start discussions on what tax administration for the 21st century could look like.

The conference brought together academics, business, tax advisors, and Government officials and covered a wide range of topics.

Click the above tabs for the agenda and presentations, and to view the conference footage.

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Day 1 Agenda

8:00 – 8:30

Registration

8:30 – 8:40

Introduction and welcome
Naomi Ferguson, Commissioner of Inland Revenue

8:40 – 9:00

Business Transformation: a once in a generation opportunity
Hon Todd McClay, Minister of Revenue

9:00 – 10:00

Scene setting – what’s it all about
David Carrigan, Policy Director, Inland Revenue

10:00 – 10:30

Coffee break

10:30 – 11:30

Compliance costs
Prof Chris Evans, School of Taxation and Business Law, Australian School of Business, UNSW, Australia

11:30 – 12:30

An international perspective on revenue administration
Michael Keen, Deputy Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, International Monetary Fund

12:30 – 1:15

Lunch

1:15 – 2:15

What taxpayers want – hearing from different perspectives
Paul Dunne, Managing Partner for Tax, KPMG New Zealand
John Payne, Head of Tax, New Zealand Superannuation Fund
Sue Chetwin, Chief Executive Officer, Consumer New Zealand 

2:15 – 2:45

What Inland Revenue wants
– Greg James, Deputy Commissioner, Change, Inland Revenue

2:45 – 3:00

Coffee Break

3:00 – 5:00

Possible reform models – blue skies session
Robin Oliver, Director, OliverShaw
Thomas Pippos, CEO, Deloitte New Zealand
Therese Turner, Principal, Turner and Associates
Keith Taylor, Policy Manager, Inland Revenue

5:00 – 5:30

Open Discussion

 

Day 2 Agenda

9:00 – 10:00

What motivates compliance?
Prof James Alm, Chair, Department of Economics, Tulane University

10:00 – 11:00

Penalties, enforcement and debt
Geof Nightingale, Tax Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Keith Taylor, Policy Manager, Inland Revenue
Dr Lisa Marriott, Associate Professor, School of Accounting and Commercial Law, Victoria University of Wellington

11:00 – 11:30

Coffee Break

11:30 – 12:00

Technology’s role
Stefan Korn, CEO, CreativeHQ

12:00 – 12:45

Going digital: the move to ‘e’
Arlene White, Deputy Commissioner, Service Delivery, Inland Revenue
Prof Miriam Lips, Professor of e-Government, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington

12:45 – 1:45

Lunch

1:45 – 2:45

Interactions with social assistance
– Murray Shadbolt, Senior Policy Advisor, Policy and Strategy, Inland Revenue
– Jason Raven, Chief Policy Analyst, Welfare Reform, Ministry of Social Development
– David Rea, Principal Analyst, Ministry of Social Development

2:45 – 3:00

Coffee Break

3:00 – 4:00

The way forward for New Zealand
Panel discussion

 

Guest Speakers

Mike Keen

Michael Keen
Deputy Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, International Monetary Fund

Michael Keen is Deputy Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund, where he was previously head of the Tax Policy and Tax Coordination divisions.


Chris Evans

Chris Evans
Professor, School of Taxation and Business Law (incorporating Atax),
Australian School of Business

Chris is Professor of Taxation and former Head of the Australian School of Taxation (Atax) at The University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia. He specialises in comparative taxation, capital and wealth taxation, tax law and administration, tax policy and reform.


James Alm

James Alm
Professor and Chair of Department of Economics, Tulane University

James currently teaches and researches in the area of public economics, in such areas as tax compliance, the tax treatment of the family, income reporting, fiscal federalism, and tax reform. He is currently Editor of Public Finance Review.


Hon Todd McClay

Hon Todd McClay
Minister of Revenue
Associate Minister of Tourism
MP for Rotorua

Hon McClay is the Member of Parliament for Rotorua. In June 2013 Mr McClay was appointed Minister of Revenue and Associate Health and following a Cabinet reshuffle this year, he retained the Revenue portfolio and was appointed Associate Minister of Tourism.


Naomi Ferguson

Naomi Ferguson
Commissioner and Chief Executive, Inland Revenue, New Zealand

Naomi took up her position of Commissioner and Chief Executive of Inland Revenue on 21 July 2012. Naomi is an experienced public sector executive with more than 20 years’ experience working in revenue agencies in the United Kingdom (UK) and New Zealand.


Robin Oliver

Robin Oliver
Director, OLIVERSHAW

Robin was Deputy Commissioner of Policy at Inland Revenue. He has also worked for the New Zealand Treasury in a variety of areas and as a private sector tax advisor. Robin was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2009 Queen’s Birthday Honours and is currently a partner at OLIVERSHAW, a tax consultancy.


Suzanne Chetwin

Sue Chetwin
Chief Executive Officer, Consumer New Zealand

Sue joined Consumer in April 2007 after more than 25 years in print journalism. Sue was formerly the Editor of Sunday News, Sunday Star Times and the Herald on Sunday. Sue is a director of the Banking Ombudsman Scheme, an alternate on the Electricity and Gas Complaints Commission and a member of the Electricity Authority Retail Advisory group.


Thomas Pippos

Thomas Pippos
Chief Executive Officer, Deloitte New Zealand

Thomas is the Chief Executive of Deloitte. Previously he led Deloitte’s National Tax Practice for 13 years and has over 25 years’ experience as a tax professional. He has advised extensively on Tax Policy, International Tax, Mergers & Acquisitions and Tax Controversy. He has also led the provision of corporate tax advice to some of NZ largest corporates across multiple industries. Thomas is recognised as a leading tax advisor and his views are frequently sought by media on tax matters.


Paul Dunne

Paul Dunne
Managing Partner for Tax, KPMG New Zealand

Paul is a well-known tax professional with more than 24 years’ experience advising clients on tax issues. Paul works closely with Government and tax officials on various tax policy and operational matters. Paul is chair of the NZICA Tax Advisory Group and was a member of the Tax Working Group.


Geof Nightingale

Geof Nightingale
Partner, PwC

Geof has been involved in advising clients in the energy, services, retail, property, forestry and Maori business sectors for quite some time. He has had a long involvement with Government, Inland Revenue and Treasury in tax policy development and was a member of the NZICA National Tax Committee for 11 years (its chair for 3) and a Tax Working Group member.


Stefan Korn

Stefan Korn
CEO, Creative HQ

Stefan is an investor, entrepreneur and CEO of Creative HQ, a publicly funded business incubator and accelerator in Wellington. In early 2014, Stefan and his team helped launch New Zealand’s first crowdsourcing competition in the public sector – Inland Revenue’s “APP4IR”. Stefan is a founding investor of New Zealand’s first digital accelerator programme “Lightning Lab” and serves on a number of boards of profit and not-for-profit organisations.


Theresa Turner

Therese Turner
Principal, Turner & Associates

Therese is a tax specialist whose practice involves the provisions of tax advisory and training services. She is the Independent Specialist Tax Advisor to the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee, a co-author of Staples Tax Guide, and is a member of the adjunct faculty of the Open Polytechnic.


John Payne

John Payne
Head of Tax, New Zealand Superannuation Fund

John is Head of Tax at the Governments $25b New Zealand Superannuation Fund and Convenor of the tax thought leadership group the Corporate Taxpayer Group. He is also a member of the Commissioner of Inland Revenue ‘s Business Transformation Reference Group. He has been at the New Zealand Superannuation Fund for 5 years.


Miriam Lips

Miriam Lips
Professor of e-Government, Victoria School of Business, Victoria University of Wellington

Miriam is the inaugural Professor of e-Government at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Government, and the Programme Director of a new e-Government Master’s programme at Victoria University.


Lisa Marriott

Lisa Marriott
Associate Professor, Victoria University

Lisa is an Associate Professor of Taxation at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Accounting and Commercial Law. Lisa’s research interests include taxation, comparative international accounting, and experimental approaches to taxation research.  She has a particular interest in the behavioural impacts of taxation.


David Rea

David Rea
Principal Analyst, Ministry of Social Development

David is a Principal Advisor in the Ministry of Social Development. He is also a Research Associate with the Institute for Policy and Governance Studies, and teaches a post graduate paper on Social Policy for the School of Government at Victoria University.


Jason Raven

Jason Raven
Chief Policy Analyst, Welfare Reform, Ministry of Social Development

Jason is a policy advisor with the Ministry of Social Development. He works on a variety of social policy issues including benefit reform and the tax-welfare interface. He has worked on policy initiatives such as social housing, Working for Families and the design of a single core benefit.


Greg James

Greg James
Deputy Commissioner, Change, Inland Revenue Department, New Zealand

Greg has a wealth of experience in transformation and change, successfully leading a number of large scale programmes. In addition to this, Greg has held executive roles at Fonterra as the Director Information Systems, Global Business Process and Global Procurement and as the acting CIO of Telecom Retail. Greg joined Inland Revenue in June 2013.


Arlene White

Arlene White
Deputy Commissioner, Service Delivery, Inland Revenue Department, New Zealand

Arlene has a wealth of experience as a senior leader in field operations and in the headquarters of the Canada Revenue Agency, where she was most recently Assistant Commissioner, Assessment and Benefit Services Branch.


David Carrigan

David Carrigan
Policy Director, Inland Revenue Department, New Zealand

David has a wealth of experience in providing tax policy advice and over the past 17 years he has been involved in a wide variety of issues including the taxation of savings, personal tax cuts and a number of international tax issues. David has managed a number of tax budgets, and also the 2007 tax reform of investment – resulting in the new PIE and FDR rules.


Keith Taylor

Keith Taylor
Policy Manager, Inland Revenue Department, New Zealand

Keith is currently a Policy Manager for Inland Revenue. He has worked on a variety of tax administration matters over the years including designing the current rules around end of year square-up, tax penalties, PAYE and provisional tax.


Murry Shadbolt

Murray Shadbolt
Senior Policy Advisor, Policy and Strategy, Inland Revenue

Murray is a senior policy advisor at Inland Revenue working on social policy issues including the definition of family income. He has also worked in the Ministry of Social Development and the Treasury on a range of tax and social policy reform projects.

Please contact Nicole Hutchinson, Events Coordinator, Communications, Inland Revenue 04 890 1608

Tax Administration for the 21st Century Conference Working Papers

 

WP01/2014

Policy and Strategy, Inland Revenue. ‘Tax Administration for the 21st Century: A policy vision’.

WP02/2014

Evans, C., and Tran-Nam, B.,‘Tax Compliance Costs in New Zealand: An International Comparative Evaluation’.

 

Day 1 Conference Footage

 

Introduction and Welcome

 

Business Transformation: A once in a generation opportunity

 

Scene Setting – what it’s all about

 

Compliance costs

 

An international perspective on revenue administration

 

What taxpayers want – hearing from different perspectives

 

What Inland Revenue wants


 

Day 2 Conference Footage

 

What motivates compliance?

 

Penalties, enforcement and debt

 

Technology’s role

 

Going digital: the move to ‘e’

 

Interactions with social assistance

 

The way forward for New Zealand

 
 

Conference footage playlist