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 (00:00):
Together du for c LLEN 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.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hi, thanks havving On, Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
It seems incredibly high. Is that higher than previous years
or about normal?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Definitely going up. The deck bot'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 technique overseas as well.
But definitely an area we're putting more focus on now
thinking about that.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Is this a sign of how much streets businesses are under?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Definitely we think it's some of that. It's also a
bit of a sign that during COVID we eased off
our dec collection activities a little bit around and didn't
push us so and we didn't probably look to help
businesses or look orate businesses then that we're struggling to survive.
So what we're seeing is a bit of an increase
in the amount of companies getting in debt, and some

(01:12):
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 pay and the
JST 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 1 (01:30):
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 2 (01:39):
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 write off, so right
across that small business area, which could be in the

(02:01):
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

(02:23):
quite clearly from the outside wal 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 1 (02:32):
I'm sure that's not really what you want, Tony. Thanks
very much, Tony Morris, IAD customer Segment manager.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
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