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Kiwi central bank spats with Aussies over tax

Kiwi central bank spats with Aussies over tax

(17 August 2004 – New Zealand) Australian owned banks have hit back at Reserve Bank of New Zealand assertions that they are not paying enough tax into government coffers. According to Reserve Bank papers released last week, there is growing concern over the amount of tax banks say they are paying and the amount received by the government.

RBNZ is looking at tightening laws to extract more taxation revenue from its top five banks, all of which are owned by Australian banks.

"The major problem was that rules that were designed to facilitate the operation of regional headquarters in New Zealand by foreign companies were being used to shelter New Zealand sourced bank income," the Reserve Bank said.

Banks have received tax reassessments from New Zealand’s Inland Revenue Department over the past few weeks amounting to some NZ$1 billion (A$0.9billion).

Commonwealth Bank owned ASB Bank and National Australia Bank owned Bank of New Zealand have both said they are meeting their taxation obligations.

Last week, Westpac announced its New Zealand operation could face a A$582 million tax bill after a NZIRD review of three structured transactions carried out in 1999.

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