A.A.C. fears effect of fringe benefit tax

Press, 23 March 1985, Page 9

A.A.C. fears effect of fringe benefit tax

The Automobile Association (Canterbury) believes that the planned fringe benefit tax legislation would severely hamper much of its services to motorists. The legislation would reduce, in particular, the A.A.’s emergency breakdown service and could cost up to $25,000 a year, said the Canterbury president, Mr Ron Wilton, yesterday. The application of the tax would produce severe difficulties for service vehicles, particularly in outlying areas, he said. The association’s fleet of cars in Canterbury included breakdown service vehicles, secondary school driver education scheme cars, and motor camp and signposting vehicles, he said. The association had

checked bus routes and timetables and found that it was impossible to rely on public transport for its patrol officers. These officers used their familiar yellow breakdown cars to and from home at 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. “A.A.C. has no convenient location to store these vehicles. Security is a problem. A.A. officers are under specific instructions not to use these vehicles for private travel,” Mr Wilton said.

“With the special fitting out of the vehicles to provide the tools of the job, the idea of an officer taking his family for a Sunday drive in such a vehicle is preposterous,” he said. The chairman of the Parliamentary select com-

mittee considering the controversial bill, Mr Trevor de Cleene, had said this week that the committee had recommended that the A.A. be exempt. “All members recognised that we should be exempt,” said Mr Wilton.

Mr de Cleene had prepared an amendment he would propose while the bill was in its early stages in Parliament. “No further amendment would be accepted,” said Mr Wilton.

“I fail to see how a recommendation made by all the members of the select committee, who had seen the submissions and the details, could be thrown out by the rest of the House who had not.”

Mr Wilson said he accepted the inclusion of executives’ vehicles in the fringe benefits tax provisions. The association had two such vehicles and had always been willing to accept its new responsibilities there.

It was the cars of employees in the outlying areas, such as Hanmer Springs, which should not be included.

“His place of work is the roadside somewhere in his territory,” he said. “An office worker is not charged fringe benefit tax for his desk. The yellow car is our officer’s tool of trade. “These officers use their home properties for storage of signs, their office, and their radio telephone base. Yet the A.A.C. must pay the fringe benefits tax on the use of their vehicles.”

The A.A.C. was an incorporated society, and serviced its members, but it also provided a service to all motorists, with road signs and maps. It was affiliated to similar organisations overseas, and therefore provided a service to tourists in New Zealand in rental cars.