Heather du Plessis-Allan: Family First situation is nothing compared to bigger picture with charities

I think a lot of our charities need a good looking over today after the Family First decision.
This stuff with Family First doesn’t matter. It’s nothing compared to what is really going on.
I reckon the bigger problem with charities is actually how many of them are running businesses and not paying taxes?
How is it we have big companies like Sanitarium making tens of millions of dollars in profits in a year and not paying any income tax?
Because they’re doing God’s work for the Seventh Day Adventists.
You have a massive player in dairy in Waikato paying no tax again because they’re associated with the Open Brethren. And they’re spreading the gospel so they’re a charity.
You’ve got big iwi like Ngai Tahu running fisheries operations and running every second massive tourism attraction you see in the South Island, and again, paying no tax.
Imagine trying to run a business in competition with one of these guys. It would be so hard.
They’ve got an advantage because you’re paying tax, meanwhile, you’re trying to compete knowing that you’re essentially subsiding their business because they’re being given permission to pay no tax at all.
There are 28,000 charities in this country. All of them paying no income tax.
We have more than twice as many charities in this country per person as they have in the UK and probably that’s because of what we do with that tax.
They fixed that tax loophole 100 years ago. We haven’t done it yet and we don’t look like we’re going to.
Charities here are also really wealthy. They own $65 billion in assets between them and they spent $18 billion in 2020 between them.
The Family First decision is nothing compared to what should be happening in the charity sector.
It’ll set a precedent, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to strip any of the big name charities of their status, nor will the Government review do the same.
Most of us in the real world will look around at these big commercial businesses, big wealthy iwi and big landowning churches all paying no tax and we will all think that none of this seems really fair.

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