Since mid-June, the department has issued 16,500 deduction notices—25 percent more than in all of last year—recovering $17 million from over 8,000 completed deductions and another $5.5 million still in progress.
The clampdown follows a post-Covid shift from a lenient to a more assertive approach as total tax debt hit $9.3 billion by March.
Chartered accountants told state-funded media IRD is targeting persistent non-payers and businesses that withheld GST or PAYE to stay afloat. Critics note some taxpayers have had just a week’s warning before deductions, while IRD insists its system upgrade allows earlier detection and urges people to engage to arrange payment plans.
Daily Telegraph New Zealand (DTNZ) is an independent news website, first published in October 2021. - where this article was sourced.
Chartered accountants told state-funded media IRD is targeting persistent non-payers and businesses that withheld GST or PAYE to stay afloat. Critics note some taxpayers have had just a week’s warning before deductions, while IRD insists its system upgrade allows earlier detection and urges people to engage to arrange payment plans.
Daily Telegraph New Zealand (DTNZ) is an independent news website, first published in October 2021. - where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
I guess I don’t understand why the IRD is allowed to take money directly from a bank account but anyone else has to try through the court system and tolerate a trickle if they get anything at all?
I mean, if our system is fair and just and our courts are operating as they should, why wouldn’t the IRD have to go that route?
Is this an admission that the victims of crime, unpaid bills and lawful judgements are only offered “money” as a rubber stamp exercise with no teeth? Surely not…
Does Te Tari Taake deduct from Aotearoaians accounts or only from New Zealanders accounts?
In response to Anon 9.45, any competent accountant could write an essay on the legal remedies available to the Commissioner of Inland Revenue when collecting tax debt. Naturally, despite the misgivings of Anon 9.45, they start with the right of the Commissioner to sue through the Courts like any other person owed money. In the case of tax debt however, it's often not just ordinary debt that is owing. Much of it consists of GST, PAYE, and other withholding taxes, collected by the taxpayer but not turned over to the IRD. None of those monies are the property of the taxpayer but are held in trust for the Crown. In other words, for all of us. Since the taxpayer has a statutory duty to account for tax within clear deadlines, and the Commissioner has a statutory duty to collect it, the Commissioner is both legally and morally entitled to take extraordinary measures to enforce collection..And if Anon 9.45 thinks the Commissioner is just a rubber-stamper with no teeth, I hope for his sake he is never on the receiving end of a demand to pay overdue tax. He will soon find he has been sadly misinformed.
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