Mark Hooper: Federated Farmers transport spokesperson on the backlash to the Government's new 'ute tax'

Federated Farmers is calling on Revenue Minister Simon Watts to rule out new changes to the Fringe Benefit tax that would impact utes.

The IRD has proposed major changes to the way FBT applies to utes and farmers are concerned this would set them back thousands of dollars a year.

Federated Farmers' transport spokesperson Mark Hooper says this issue started drawing in more attention post-Fieldays.

"We've had a little bit of communication with the minister's office - as I said, we looked at it from a farm perspective, we could see that there were some issues with the categories they had laid out." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Now tell you what farmers are not happy with Revenue
Minister Simon wats are they? He is the guy responsible
for a plan change to the way that fringe benefit
tax applies to utes. If he goes through with this,
it would cost farmers thousands of dollars every single year.
Mark Hooper is Federated Farmer's Transport spokesperson with US.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Hey, Mark, good evening, Heather.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Have you heard what the government's just sent through to us.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
I'm pretty much aware of what's been going on. Basically,
it was a bit of a story that blew up
post field days when there was a lot of hype
around buying new utes with commodity price has been up
and the government government's newly announced investment boost which allowed
an immediate twenty percent depreciation deductibility on US sets. And

(01:04):
then in the midst of that, fintech findecks sorry tax advisors,
they sort of said, hang on a minute, whatever you
just saved on depreciation a new you you could just
have ended up losing through the proposed changes to the
FBT rules. So it was a bit of a classic
case of giving on one hand while taking on the other.

(01:27):
And not only that, but of course it's a FBT
is the cost every year, So obviously the optics around
this we're not looking too good at the time.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, and so have you heard what the government's just
sent through to us?

Speaker 3 (01:40):
What have they sent through all of.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
This debarcle mark over the last few days has gone
on about a week now. They have sent us a
statement that says, in terms of introducing a new eighty
thousand dollars fringe benefit tax threshold on youtes, we can
rule that out ird consider a lot of things regularly,
but this is something that is not going to get progressed.
How good.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
That's a great result, and that was certainly one of
the issues that we had with it. You know, we
looked at it from the perspective of what we know
actually happens on farms. And you know, if you're buying
new utes, if you want to look at say a
seventy series land Cruiser, your starting prices around eighty grand,
and regardless of whether it was one hundred percent work

(02:26):
related use or not, by going over that threshold, it
immediately put you into one hundred percent payment for FBT
criteria and so that was a considerably ongoing significant expense
on that purchase.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
How long have you guys been going on about this?

Speaker 3 (02:45):
Well, as I say, it only just blew up really
post field days, and I think that was I see
part of the iss.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
On some of these stories. So that's that's Friday. Is
it Friday last week?

Speaker 3 (02:54):
So that yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, that would have been going on about it since
Friday last We've got no traction at all, and then
all of a sudden today they do a U turn.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
Well, we've had a little bit of communication with the
Minister's office obviously. You know, as I said, we looked
at it from a farm perspective. We could see that
there were some issues with the categories that they had
laid out. Was really easy for the way that we
used farm use for those to be escalated into the
higher categories, hence a significantly greater FBT liability. And so

(03:25):
you know, once that came out, it was just a
case of really getting hold of the Minister's office and
talking through some of these issues. It's great to hear
an immediate response.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Okay, Yeah, it's brilliant, Mark, Thank you very much. I'm
stoked for you. Mark Hooper, Federated Farmers Transport Spokesperson.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
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