The Inland Revenue Department has ducked the key question about its dealings with an aggrieved taxpayer.
The Post reports the taxpayer’s plaint under the heading –
‘He’s a nutter’: IRD staff’s comments about small business owner rankle
It kicks off:
George Evans wanted answers from Inland Revenue. Instead, he found out what some of its staff thought of him.
“Oh gawd [name], your nemesis,“ one wrote, under a link to a Stuff story featuring the Nelson entrepreneur.
“I can’t decide whether that’s funny or sad,“ another said, referring to Evans’ long-running battle to see his delivery business treated equally to his competitors.
“Mind blowing ignorance,“ said another.
“Don’t let you get this down, the guy is a nutter!”
Evans – who established a Nelson-based delivery service, YUMMi – is embroiled in a long-running dispute with the IRD over his tax classification.
His competitors — like Delivereasy and Uber Eats — are deemed “marketplaces” under tax rules.
YUMMi is considered a “direct seller”.
This (according to The Post) means the burden of GST falls squarely on him, whereas his competitors can offset part of that tax through a driver credit.
The Post reports that in March, in an effort to understand the reasoning behind IRD’s decisions, he requested all the information the department held about him, including emails, recordings, messages.
His request was processed under the Privacy Act, which allows individuals the right to ask any business, organisation or government agency for the information they hold about an applicant.
The response included internal staff messages.
“I’m ropeable,” one says of Evans’ story in Stuff.
“Yep I would be as well, I know how much you guys try and help these people,“ replied a colleague.
“He’s really angry that his business isn’t doing well so he’s just lashing out at everyone,“ another wrote.
IRD is reported to have apologised to Evans about this boorish behaviour by its bureaucrats. A “media adviser” is quoted as saying:
“We take such matters seriously and appropriate steps have been taken to address this with the staff involved to reinforce expectations around conduct and communication.”
But – according to Evans – no-one has explained to him why he is classified differently from his competitors.
And that, surely, is the key issue here.
Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.
“Oh gawd [name], your nemesis,“ one wrote, under a link to a Stuff story featuring the Nelson entrepreneur.
“I can’t decide whether that’s funny or sad,“ another said, referring to Evans’ long-running battle to see his delivery business treated equally to his competitors.
“Mind blowing ignorance,“ said another.
“Don’t let you get this down, the guy is a nutter!”
Evans – who established a Nelson-based delivery service, YUMMi – is embroiled in a long-running dispute with the IRD over his tax classification.
His competitors — like Delivereasy and Uber Eats — are deemed “marketplaces” under tax rules.
YUMMi is considered a “direct seller”.
This (according to The Post) means the burden of GST falls squarely on him, whereas his competitors can offset part of that tax through a driver credit.
The Post reports that in March, in an effort to understand the reasoning behind IRD’s decisions, he requested all the information the department held about him, including emails, recordings, messages.
His request was processed under the Privacy Act, which allows individuals the right to ask any business, organisation or government agency for the information they hold about an applicant.
The response included internal staff messages.
“I’m ropeable,” one says of Evans’ story in Stuff.
“Yep I would be as well, I know how much you guys try and help these people,“ replied a colleague.
“He’s really angry that his business isn’t doing well so he’s just lashing out at everyone,“ another wrote.
IRD is reported to have apologised to Evans about this boorish behaviour by its bureaucrats. A “media adviser” is quoted as saying:
“We take such matters seriously and appropriate steps have been taken to address this with the staff involved to reinforce expectations around conduct and communication.”
But – according to Evans – no-one has explained to him why he is classified differently from his competitors.
And that, surely, is the key issue here.
Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
I want to hear that the IRD are going hard on Maori scams, such as non taxable " koha", Maori fictional trusts, personal possessions obtained through government grants - things like unemployable Maori running around in fancy new expensive SUVs.
It's bloody obvious that there are two tax systems running - check every taxpayer return by hard working small businesses, and a blind eye to flagrant Maori rorts.
The IRD make it quite clear to all employees that everything they put in writing as a part of their employment is subject to discovery. So to that extent those employees only have themselves to blame. Having said that, it sounds like Mr Evans is being more than a little precious about the whole business since presumably the purpose of his request to the IRD was to obtain technical tax information, which is completely objective. It's his choice to take offence if he discovers stuff he doesn't like. And by the way, IRD have a statutory obligation not to discuss the affairs of his competitors. The only issue is whether he complies with the relevant tax law.
Who cares what the burecrats said about the person....I want to know what the burecrats said about the two tier system! Why is his business subject to one rule while international based competitors are subject to another?
Its entirely possible for them to operate in NZ and collect GST. International businesses do it all the time.
Otherwise how do any of the (Australian) banks operate, how do any of the (Chinese) farms operate, or in the olden days when we had an oil & gas industry - most of which was owned by non NZ companies....the subjects complaint is important - the handling by the boors and the story descending into the personal distastes of the IRD boors - should not be the issue. Why is there one tax law for him and another for his competitors?
Last time I looked there was a thing called the Income Tax Act and even a GST Act that determined how income tax and GST are calculated, and another thing called the Tax Administration Act that determined how IRD went about doing it. If Anon 2.19 thinks IRD are failing to act in accordance with law then that is a serious allegation and s/he needs to substantiate their assertion with verifiable evidence. Otherwise they are living in fantasyland and should just have a nice cup of tea and a lie down rather than bursting into print with gross generalisatons.
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