Headline: Is IRD hiding bad news or a failed IT system?
The publication of Inland Revenue’s annual performance measures is already one week overdue.
There are two possible explanations, says Labour’s Revenue spokesperson David Clark.
“Either the outdated IT system is causing issues, or the Government is preparing to bury worrying trends in its traditional Christmas document dump.
“Either way, this is a bad news story.
“Revelations this week that self-employed debt is growing – with more than $1 billion owed to the public purse – are just the beginning. Hundreds of individuals owe more than $1 million each.
“This is a department on the slide. In the past week more embarrassing statistics have been squeezed out of IRD. In select committee, the commissioner admitted IRD has failed to meet its own reduced target of answering three out of four customer phone calls.
“It is no wonder voluntary business compliance is dropping and customer satisfaction ratings are slipping.
“It is possible the delay results from technical issues which continue to plague the Department.
“It is nearly two years since John Key said the IRD’s computer systems were holding tax policy back, but we’ve seen no progress.
“The Government has portrayed the computer system rebuild as a transformation project and paid international consultants $50 million of taxpayer money.
“All it has to show for our money is an ‘in principle’ agreement to proceed with the preparation of further business cases.
“Words fail me.
“The Department either can’t or won’t put the statistics up on its website. One thing we can be sure of is that more embarrassing news is on the way,” David Clark says.
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