Is The IRD Still Out Of Control

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Kia Ora all,

Remember the furore a couple of years ago re the IRD when ordinary hard working productive New Zealanders were concerned with the intimidatory tactics of this institute. Remember the case(s) where a couple of productive hard working honest value producing families had well established businesses, that employed fellow productive New Zealanders, and because of discrepancies in tax obligations their respective companies were taken apart by the dishonesty of certain tax agents and their bosses in the IRD. i.e. Graham Holland.
The suicides from those cases are well documented and in one case the IRD had reduced one families tax liabilities from $1,million down to $75,000.00, after years of saying the million dollars was due and the wife had committed suicide. It was too late however as the company had been reduced significantly and the wife had already committed suicide.
We can also remember where the government of the day (1998) set up a select committee to look into the affairs of this institute and there were only 186 submissions received out of all the concerned and irate individuals that were having their say on talk back and other mediums.
My 26 page submission brought up the issue of penalty payments, when tax obligations were late and under current legislation those penalty payments were lethal for businesses that were struggling.
The Finance and Expenditure committee's recommendation suggested penalty payments were indeed lethal and must be addressed.
I am somewhat concerned therefore to read an article in this weeks "Herald" where a couple who had a $30,000 debt owing to the IRD and were finding it difficult to meet those commitements had accrued a staggering $200,000.00 debt made up of penalties. This young couple with school age kids had their house and assets sold to pay that debt and I sincerely hope there are enough New Zealanders concerned enough to take this institute to task.
Especialy when we see millions of hard earned tax dollars mismanaged by those that produce nothing (ie Politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, consultants)

later

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