Mr Taxman not picking up the phone
Up to 55% of calls from taxpayers are being rejected by the IRD because it does not have enough staff rostered on to answer the phones, according to data supplied to the Taxpayers' Union covering a 2-week period in May this year.
At tax time, the least the Government could do is make sure it answers the phone," says Jordan Williams, Executive Director of the Taxpayers' Union. "On each of the three days the IRD have had to cap the calls coming in, they didn't even answer the number of calls their own estimates said they could expect.
These problems with the phones came on top of significant downtime of the IRD's website recently.
Paying tax is bad enough but having to wait hours on the phone only to be hung-up on, is a slap in the face by the taxman.