Bank of New Zealand (and thus its owner, NAB) will finally take a provision in its accounts for a tax liability first incurred (but contested by the bank) more than four years ago.The provision will be for NZ$661 million, which takes into account costs but not potential tax penalties.NAB said it plans to ignore the tax provision in reporting cash earnings, further diminishing the merit of the pick-a-number approach to reporting profits by banks.BNZ said it planned to appeal the ruling by the High Court in July in which the judge found that there was no business that the bank had done when it entered into the structured finance transactions and which date from the late 1990s. "Unless lending or funding at a substantial loss is termed banking business, there was no business to be done here," the judge wrote in the decision.NAB's, and BNZ's, chums in other media outlets have argued that John Wild, the judge who made the ruling, lacked experience in commercial law and have talked up the prospects of an appeal.A hearing is in progress in a parallel case involving Westpac in the High Court, but before a different judge.