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Speaker 1: Now the IID has caught the horticulture industry underpaying taxes

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Speaker 1: to the tune of forty five million dollars. Tony Morris

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Speaker 1: is a spokesperson for IID with us now, Hey, Tony,

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Speaker 1: he very well, thank you. Is it more than you

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Speaker 1: were expecting.

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Speaker 2: A little bit more for the tenmants so far? But

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Speaker 2: it is an industry where there's a risk of tax

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Speaker 2: not being paid well, either intentionally or not intentionally.

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Speaker 1: Why is it a risk for this industry, Well, it's.

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Speaker 2: An industry where there's plenty of cash. There's sort of

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Speaker 2: a transient workforce, so the growers need to employ lots

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Speaker 2: of different people, not for a whole year, at different times.

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Speaker 2: So what we see in the industry is the growers

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Speaker 2: who need people to pick for them, they tend to

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Speaker 2: employ a contracting firm who employ all the pickers. And

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Speaker 2: the contracting firms at times can actually also contract to

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Speaker 2: another contracting firm to contract to the pickures. So it's

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Speaker 2: quite a complex industry. And if there's payment going through

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Speaker 2: with cash or what else, it's easy to sort of

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Speaker 2: get lost or things that happen intentionally. We were it's

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Speaker 2: hard to attrack the money and not all the taxes

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Speaker 2: paid correctly.

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Speaker 1: So how did you crack down on this? Is this

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Speaker 1: basically because you've got that extra funding for enforcement.

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Speaker 2: It's an area that we've been looking at for a

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Speaker 2: few years, I mean, working cross government to try and

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Speaker 2: come up with some solutions, but certainly the excellent using

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Speaker 2: some extra money as well to increase what we're doing

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Speaker 2: over the next year or so, so a bit both really,

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Speaker 2: but certainly something that's something that we need to keep

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Speaker 2: working on.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, how do you put the kibosh on this?

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Speaker 2: It's one of those tricky problems. Certainly we're doing audits

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Speaker 2: where we need to and investigations, but the more we

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Speaker 2: can do to actually try and get the paid text

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Speaker 2: early is the best results. So what we've seen over

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Speaker 2: the last years is we're trying to actually work with

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Speaker 2: the growers who you know, who generally are doing the

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Speaker 2: right thing and want to make the industry safe, and

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Speaker 2: working with the industry to put more on them to

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Speaker 2: make sure that they can either withhold texts from the

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Speaker 2: contracting firms or make sure the contracting firms are viable

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Speaker 2: and compliant and similar with the contracting firms around when

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Speaker 2: they're paying the pickers they're deducting texts early, so we're

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Speaker 2: not leaving the text to come from the pickers at

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Speaker 2: the end of the day, but try to get the

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Speaker 2: text early on as the money's been passed across. So

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Speaker 2: a joint problem, but it's one of those ones that

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Speaker 2: we can educate people. Get the text early in the transactions.

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Speaker 2: That's the best way for us to go.

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Speaker 1: Good stuff, Tony, best of luck with it. I really

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Speaker 1: appreciate your time, Tony Morris and Land Revenue Department. For

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