Tony Morris: Inland Revenue spokesperson on the IRD taking money from people's bank accounts

The IRD is set to be cracking down harder on those who don't pay their taxes properly, and they've unveiled new measures for people who ignore correspondence.

The department will start taking money out of people's bank accounts if they owe over a certain amount - and they've recovered at least $17 million so far.

The IRD's Tony Morris says they aim to phone people at least twice before they start directly taking money out of accounts.

"Other times, we might just contact people once or twice and then take money out of their accounts so they don't squander it." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk zed B.
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Now. It turns out Inland Revenue is going hard on
collecting outstanding tech attacks to the extent of taking money
out of bank accounts. Seventeen million bucks has been recovered
from more than eight thousand bank account deductions so far,
and Tony Morris is Inland Revenue customer segment leader. Hi Tony, Hi, Heather,
I'm thanking yeah, thanks very much for joining us. How
many times do you try to get in touch before

(00:37):
you start making these withdraws.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
In this particular case, we're going to have a couple
of goes. We'll have a first call, then leave a message,
and we might try one more contact and then we
can look to take the money straight out of the
bank accounts. But that's in this campaign we're doing. But
other times we might just contact people once or twice
and then take care money out of their accounts.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
And this is not like, to be fair, this is
not your average debt like this is. This is debt
that's been owed for six months to five years, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yep? Yep it is. And you know it's all sorts
of different sizes of the debt we get, but largely
at this time we're focusing on GST and PA WAY
and employer a debt. But it's something that we use
us GOUTE often and with individual customers we often can
take money out of their wages, go to the employer,
take money at the wages. But in this case, in

(01:26):
the businesses, we tend to go straight to the banks
where we know there's money in their bank accounts.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
What's the largest amount you've taken out?

Speaker 3 (01:34):
And one off, I couldn't tell you exactly what the
amount would be, but we can take quite sizable. So
it's depending on how much money they've got got on
the back.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
How do you strike to balance there, Tony, Because I mean,
you obviously don't want to clean out everything because it
might it might it might have you know, quite negative consequences.
So how much do you take out?

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Well, we generally take out one hundred percent of that
love to take out one hundred percent of the debt,
so in some cases that might be pretty close to
all the money or more. But I mean again, we've
tried to contact the people fest and all we want
them to do is to get in contact with us
so we can set up some installment arrangements. But yeah,
we do tend to look at the amount of tax,

(02:13):
so that can be whether it's a smaller amount, you know,
down the ten grand, or whether it's a bigger amount.
We'll look to take what we can.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Now, how did we get to the point where we
have debt that's O that's five years old? Is this
is this specific? Like did we go extra softly during
COVID or is this kind of normal?

Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, we did go. We did go soft down COVID
then just to try and keep people going so the
deck can grow. But we've always had it where deck
can grow and go past five years. Sometimes it's just
extended times that people get in debt and we might
set up in storming arrangements and try to help them through,
and then it all just falls over to what's then

(02:51):
and we've run to that debt sort of gets past
two years old, it sort of becomes hard for people
to pay, you know, and it almost becomes that it
just sort of grows with interest in penalties. And sometimes
once we get past that too, you know, we're really
looking at and solvent toy your liquidations which can take
some one but but I can't get up to five

(03:11):
years or more. But in this case I free. You
can see people have the money and the banks we'll
still to go after up to five years.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Interesting, Tony, thanks very much, appreciate it. Tony Morris, Inland
Revenue Customer Segment Leader.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
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