Notice Board - News

Consultation Workshops on Charities Tax

Philanthropy New Zealand, National

A discussion paper is likely to be released from IRD shortly which will seek to stimulate discussion about Taxation and Generosity and will be open for submissions.

The proposed changes contain a range of options for New Zealand charities. Philanthropic trusts, registered charities, corporate donors, Maori authorities and private givers could all be potentially affected by the proposals.

Consultation hui will be held in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin during the submission period where the implications of the document will be discussed.

These meetings will be Chaired by the Tangata Whenua, Community and Voluntary Sector and Charles Ngaki from IRD will be on hand to discuss the document, as will someone from the Tangata Whenua, Community & Voluntary Sector working group. More information about the dates and times of the consultation will be available shortly. 

As many of you are aware Philanthropy New Zealand, the Federation for Voluntary Welfare Organisations, the Community Sector Taskforce and a number of sector organisations have been working with IRD this year following a commitment of the Labour led government to the development of a new Tax Rebate Regime for Charities. The potential changes to the tax rebate regime for charities are part of the Labour-led Government's confidence and supply agreement with United Future and are aimed at encouraging philanthropic giving in New Zealand. 

Over the past few years Philanthropy New Zealand has undertaken a lot of research into giving in New Zealand. There is little data available and this has been an attempt to provide some information. Also during the last 5 years there have been many initiatives world wide to promote giving. Attached is a reflective paper that Saints Information have prepared for Philanthropy New Zealand.

It seeks to:

• Reflect the key findings from the extensive research on generosity commissioned by Philanthropy New Zealand since 2002.
• Reflect the key findings from other related research.
• Reflect the key initiatives that have occurred internationally with the aim of stimulating generosity, particularly in the UK, Canada and Australia.
• Provide a bibliographic reference point. 

We hope this paper will be a really useful tool to assist you to develop a submission in response to the document when it's released — submissions are likely to close late November. This is just the start in many instances for information gathering and has very easy to use web links throughout.