Tony Morris: IRD Customer Segment Manager on the IRD revealing NZ businesses owe over $1.4 billion in unpaid taxes

New Zealand businesses owe more than $1.4 billion in unpaid GST and PAYE from the 2025 tax year, according to new reports.

Of 2025's number, $432.9 million relates to employer activities and $1.047 billion to GST.

IRD Customer Segment Manager Tony Morris says this data's in line with what's happening overseas - but it's an area they aim to put more focus on.

"What we're seeing is a bit of an increase in the amount of companies getting in debt - and some of those are the ones that possibly would have failed earlier during Covid. So we're definitely seeing an increase."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:18):
Eighteen past five. Now there is get a load of this,
almost one and a half billion dollars left in unpaid
GST and pay aye business tax from last year's tax here.
Over a billion of that is just the GST. Tony
Morris is the iid's customer segment manager and with us,
Hey Tony, hey, thanks having on, Yeah, thank you. It

(00:39):
seems incredibly high. Is that higher than previous years or
about normal?

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Definitely going up the dep what's going up each year
by about a billion dollars. So and as you say,
a lot of that's TST and employer text, but it's
in line sort of with what's technic overseas as well.
But definitely an area we're putting more focus on now
thinking about that.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Is this a sign of how much streets businesses are under?

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Definitely we think it's some of that. Also a bit
of a sign that during COVID we eased off our
decollection activities a little bit around and didn't didn't push
as hard so and we didn't probably look to help
businesses or recreate businesses then that were struggling to survive.
So what we're seeing is a bit of an increase
in the man of companies getting in debt, and some

(01:29):
of those are the ones that possibly would have failed
earlier during COVID, So we're definitely seeing an increase. And
what we need to do and what we're looking at
is how do we get to the pa y and
the jest earlier as soon as they're going to debt,
because once people get into debt, it could be hard
to get out of. So we're certainly focusing on that.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
I can understand why construction is the worst, but I'm
kind of surprised that the next stuff is real estate services,
rental and hiring. What explains that.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, I'm not not sure. That's a step that we've
sort of seen. I know that that comes from our
area and been put like that what we sort of
seeing in some of the stuff we're doing at the moment.
Certainly small businesses are struggling the most with the debt
and also the amount that we ride off, so right
across that small business area, which could be in the

(02:18):
real estate services or other areas like that. But certainly
the construction area is an area sort of in the
bigger at the bigger end of town that we do that.
And what we're seeing in some of the areas is
that instead of people paying entities, paying their pay or GST,
they're actually using US as a bit of a bank
because it's probably easier to get the money. I was
at a conference today where that came up quite clearly

(02:40):
from the outside world. It's easy to get money off
US PEPs and borrow. So that's something we need to
look at and change, sure other policies or just being
a bit more firmer to our approaches.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
I'm sure that's not really what you want, Tony. Thanks
very much, Tony Morris, I ad Customer Segment Manager.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
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