Latest / Best of Business / Kirk Hope: Financial Services Commission CEO on the case for making changes to the Fringe Benefit Tax

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Kirk Hope: Financial Services Commission CEO on the case for making changes to the Fringe Benefit Tax · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from newstalk EDB follow this
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• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Eye and Bread.
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  Speaker 2: Kiwis we are quick to ensure our belongings, but less
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  Speaker 2: keen to ensure ourselves. A new report from the Financial
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  Speaker 2: Services Council shows that we're twice as likely to have
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  Speaker 2: insurance protection for our car than we are for our
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  Speaker 2: health or life. They say small changes to FBT to
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  Speaker 2: fringe Benefit tax could increase the number of employees with
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  Speaker 2: medical insurance covered and that would be good for productivity,
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  Speaker 2: that would be better for New Zealand. Kirk Hope is
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  Speaker 2: the Chief Executive of the Financial Services Council and is
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  Speaker 2: with me tonight.
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  Speaker 3: Hey Kirk, Hey, right, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Good, thank you. Good to have you on the show.
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  Speaker 2: How many people have health insurance in New Zealand?
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  Speaker 3: So about thirty percent of the population has health insurance.
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  Speaker 3: So again, so if you look at compare OECD countries
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  Speaker 3: like Australia, it's about fifty percent in Australia. So we
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  Speaker 3: are pretty under insured in terms of selling in health insurance.
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  Speaker 2: I suppose it's different from like compared to ensuring your
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  Speaker 2: car or whatever. We do have a public health system, right,
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  Speaker 2: so that presumably people are relying on that.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think possibly over relying on it as well,
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  Speaker 3: because again the idea you know, that we've pushed out
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  Speaker 3: there today is that if you enable more people to
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  Speaker 3: access private health insurance by making it cheaper, and that's
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  Speaker 3: by removing fringe benefit tax on it, which is a
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  Speaker 3: tax on an employer who is providing health insurance to
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  Speaker 3: their employee of fifty percent. So it's not inconsequential, right,
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  Speaker 3: It's quite different in New Zealand compared to say Australia,
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  Speaker 3: where if you as a person, as an individual you
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  Speaker 3: don't have health insurance, you by the age of thirty
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  Speaker 3: get taxed more. So we create a distance centive for
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  Speaker 3: employers to provide it, whereas places like Australia they say, actually,
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  Speaker 3: personally we're going to provide a distance indive view not
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  Speaker 3: to have it. So there are some opportunities here to
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  Speaker 3: kind of do things a little bit differently. I think,
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  Speaker 3: what is that.
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  Speaker 2: Have you obviously got some ideas, You've got this report.
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  Speaker 2: Have you taken it to the government, What are they
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  Speaker 2: telling you?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess the key thing for any
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  Speaker 3: government is what is it going to cost us, right,
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  Speaker 3: So we're working through that with the government. At the
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  Speaker 3: moment we have a view that actually the overall economic
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  Speaker 3: benefits would be a lot more than the fiscal cost,
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  Speaker 3: and particularly over time. The other thing that I think
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  Speaker 3: enabling more employer provided schemes what it would do is
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  Speaker 3: enable you know, kind of lower income workers to access
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  Speaker 3: private health insurance. And that's probably one of the biggest
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  Speaker 3: things because if you talk to people who have had
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  Speaker 3: it in the impact on your families, when they can
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  Speaker 3: get back to work, they can get in an operation
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  Speaker 3: that is an elective peace elective surgery might not be
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  Speaker 3: covered by acc you might not be able to access
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  Speaker 3: the public health system in a timely fashion. Whatever, you've
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  Speaker 3: got some form of private health insurance and maybe to
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  Speaker 3: get back into the workplace. The biggest thing is impact constantly,
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  Speaker 3: So those things are I think critically we genuinely had
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  Speaker 3: to think about this in a different way and other
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  Speaker 3: countries that have done it it is making a big difference.
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  Speaker 3: As I said, in Australia, fifty percent of people have
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  Speaker 3: private health insurance and it means that they can get
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  Speaker 3: back into the workplace pretty quickly. Kirk.
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  Speaker 2: Interesting stuff appreciate your time. Fight Kirk Hoak, Financial Services
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  Speaker 2: Council Chief Executive.
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