https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/panama-papers-not-such-waste-time-helped-uncover-government-sanctioned-fiction-led-law-change

but they are still trying: http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/2016/07/national-protects-tax-cheats.html National has revealed its response to the Shewan inquiry into the tax
system, announcing that it will adopt all of its recommendations:
Foreigners setting up tax-free trusts in New Zealand will soon have to
disclose their identity and any beneficiaries, after the Government
agreed to sweeping changes in the wake of the Panama Papers.

Finance Minister Bill English and Revenue Minister Michael Woodhouse
said today that they had agreed to all of the recommendations in the
Shewan Inquiry into foreign trusts.

The recommendations were "sensible" and "well-reasoned", English said,
and by acting on them the Government would help strengthen disclosure
rules and protect New Zealand's reputation.

Yay, right? Well, no - because those recommendations were only half
measures, which still leave us with secrecy by default. Oddly,
National's register won't be available to IRD, and it will still be
searche donly in response to inquiries, rather than automatically
shared with foreign tax agencies. Meaning that we're still in the
absurd situation that in order to discover tax cheating, other
countries have to ask (and know the specifics). It's a catch-22
seemingly designed to prevent enforcement.

And there's a reason for this: because when you get down to it,
National is on the side of the tax cheats. They're a party for the
rich, who view taxes as an imposition rather than the price you pay
for belonging to a civilised society. Their default attitude to people laundering money through Panama and the Cook Islands is to want to do
it themselves, rather than stamp it out and make these parasites pay
their way. So its not surprising that they're only interested in half
measures. Like climate change, like refugees, like housing, they're
doing the least they think they can get away with.

What they should be doing is being a good global citizen and putting
the New Zealand foreign trust industry out of business. And the way to
do that is with an open, searchable register, allowing the public and
NGOs to trace who owns what, combined with automatic data exchange
with other tax authorities, so foreigners can't use us for evasion. We
should not be part of this problem. And if National isn't going to
solve it, they should get out of the way and make room for someone who
will.
______________

So we have an agreement where we tell teh Australians about foreign
trusts invovling their citizens, but are setting up a new system to
not do that for anyone else. Worse, we are setting up a system that
will not enable IRD to investigate trusts - something that John Key
previously assured us they were already able to do, but now we have
had confirmed that, like other countries, our own the IRD wouldn't
have known who to ask for information anyway.

Typical of National, they are spinning for a half-solution that
protects their own - teh tax cheats are more important to National
than New Zealand's interests.

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