IRD wrong to refuse OIA request
The Inland Revenue Department has admitted it was wrong to refuse an Official Information Act request regarding multinational tax consultations.
However, the Ombudsman’s Office said it was not yet ‘‘case closed’’.
The department refused a request from Stuff in June to release 38 submissions it received in response to two discussion papers on proposed tax-law changes, saying they were a ‘‘tax secret’’.
Inland Revenue wanted to withhold the submissions until ministers had made final decisions on the law changes, which they did last month when the submissions were released.
The submissions showed the Government had made concessions requested by some submitters with an interest in the reforms, including a secretive US lobby group called the Digital Economy Group whose backers are believed to include Apple and Amazon.
Inland Revenue’s refusal to release lobbyists’ submissions before decisions were finalised resulted in a complaint by Stuff to the Ombudsman’s Office.
Inland Revenue acting deputy commissioner Emma Grigg said its original refusal to release the submissions was ‘‘consistent with our practice’’.
‘‘However, on further reflection, we now consider that we should have released the relevant public submissions earlier,’’ she said.
Inland Revenue was ‘‘reviewing our practices around the release of public submissions to ensure there is consistency in the future’’, she said.
An Ombudsman’s Office investigator said Inland Revenue’s actions would be taken into account, but its own investigation was still ongoing.
The Digital Economy Group argued in its submission that Inland Revenue’s original proposal to tighten the rules that determine whether multinational companies are deemed to have a taxable presence in New Zealand were the ‘‘most extreme in the world’’.
At issue is the tax treatment of foreign companies that pay subsidiaries or agents a fee to market products in New Zealand but book their sales overseas.
Revenue Minister Judith Collins and Finance Minister Steven Joyce announced last month that the rule change would be revised to ‘‘more narrowly target’’ tax avoidance.
Labour revenue spokesman Michael Wood said the Government had ‘‘secretly caved in to the demands of multinational tax avoiders’’ after throwing ‘‘an unprecedented blanket of secrecy over the submissions process’’.
Collins said there was no ‘‘blanket of secrecy’’ as the intention always was to release the submissions ‘‘following policy decisions as is standard practice’’.