The Tax Working Group members

Stuff reports:

Along with Cullen, the 10 members are:

* Professor Craig Elliffe, University of Auckland

* Joanne Hodge, former tax partner at Bell Gully

* Kirk Hope, Chief Executive of Business New Zealand

* Nick Malarao, senior partner at Meredith Connell

* Geof Nightingale, partner at PwC New Zealand

* Robin Oliver, former Deputy Commissioner at Inland Revenue

* Hinerangi Raumati, Chair of Parininihi ki Waitotara Inc

* Michelle Redington, Head of Group Taxation and Insurance at Air New Zealand

* Rosenberg, Economist and Director of Policy at the CTU

* Marjan Van Den Belt, Assistant Vice Chancellor (Sustainability) at Victoria University of Wellington

Overall a pretty good group. Oliver and Nightingale are serious hard hitters when it comes to tax. Elliffe and Hodge also got very good backgrounds along with Nick Malarao who has acted for IRD in many civil cases.

Personally I’d just have tax experts on there, and not have anyone from the CTU or BusinessNZ. But Labour is obliged to put union reps on everything, so you then need to balance that with someone from BusinessNZ.

Their terms of reference are severely limited but hopefully they can still come up with some good work on how to improve the tax system (as opposed to how to tax people more).