Ex-Labour Party treasurer lays complaint over tax

A complaint has been laid with Inland Revenue over how the Labour Party in Northcote handled its tax returns.

The electorate's former treasurer, Lisette Taylor, had previously lashed out at Assistant Speaker Ann Hartley, saying records were being falsified to avoid tax.

Today Ms Taylor told Radio New Zealand that she had taken her concerns over the party's different treatment of income from party members and income from donation.

She resigned from her position after refusing to sign off income from a raffle which she says should have been declared for tax purposes.

Ms Taylor told Radio New Zealand there should not be one standard of tax compliance for MPs and another for everyone else.

The long-standing party member said she was disappointed that she appeared to have been dumped from the party.

Labour Party president Mike Williams has said there had been some "confusion" over the way transactions between party members and those involving the public were recorded.

Ms Taylor claimed tax avoidance was going on in other electorates, including Prime Minister Helen Clark's Mt Albert electorate and the New Lynn one of Communications Minister David Cunliffe.

Mr Williams has said there was a problem with the way transactions were recorded.

He said there had been some "confusion" about how "internal transactions versus external transactions" were handled.

Internal transactions involved Labour Party members, while external ones involved the public.

"It goes like this, if you have an electorate committee meeting where everybody is by definition a member of the Labour Party and you sell them raffle tickets then that is an internal transaction and it's non-taxable."

However, at a rally or a barbecue involving party members and the general public or supporters, raffle tickets sold to members were non-taxable but those sold to the general public were taxable.

The difficulty was putting the money in two different kitties and that was what the debate had been about, Mr Williams said.

"The general secretary looked into this and got advice and eventually sent out a directive to all the hundreds of constituent organisations that they were to err on the side of caution and where the transaction was likely to be an external transaction and therefore taxable, that is how it was to be construed," he said recently.

- NZPA