The bill repeals the Taxation Principles Reporting Act 2023, removing the statutory requirement for Inland Revenue to produce reports assessing the tax system against listed principles.
Parliament advanced this bill under urgency (committee of whole house, first reading, second reading, third reading) — moving it through faster than usual, with less time than normal for public submissions.
These are claims MPs made in Parliament’s debate — not verified facts.
This bill repeals the Taxation Principles Reporting Act 2023, a law that required Inland Revenue (the IRD, New Zealand's tax department) to publish an annual report measuring the tax system against a set of listed principles — such as fairness, efficiency, and how the tax burden falls across different income and wealth groups. Removing that Act ends the obligation to produce these yearly transparency reports. It mainly affects Inland Revenue, which would no longer compile and publish the data, and the researchers, commentators and public who would have used the reports to understand who pays what.
It is a government bill delivering a coalition commitment to undo the previous government's measure. Supporters argue the reporting was unnecessary bureaucracy that diverted IRD staff from collecting tax and administering income-tax changes, adding cost for little benefit. Opponents argue the reports offered valuable, independent transparency about fairness in the tax system — especially how much tax the very wealthy pay — and that scrapping them reduces public accountability.
See the Parliament.nz ↗ site for the full bill.