IRD issues more than $80 million of refunds in one week

The first two batches of automatic tax assessments have been successfully issued by Inland Revenue last week with over $80 million of refunds going out to taxpayers, along with just over $10 million of tax bills to pay. Further batches go out shortly and the process will be completed by the end of July.

IRD deputy commissioner Greg James says the sort of numbers the new system is dealing with is far exceeding expectations. "Almost every day we're seeing myIR break new records with the number of customers logging in. Yesterday alone, we had just under 500,000 logins from customers completing a wide range of tasks

"That would have been enough to either see the old system grind to a halt or slow down considerably," he said, "but the new system takes this in its stride."

"Of course, our latest release hasn't been without its wrinkles and that's to be expected with a transformation of this size and scale," said \ James.

"Tax agents, in particular, are playing a valuable role in letting us know when something isn't happening as they would expect. We're grateful for that contribution and we're trying to be as responsive as possible in making any enhancements or adjustments.

Week one has seen 247,379 assessments issued comprising:

• 178,457 refunds.

• 29,080 bills to pay.

• 39,842 customers who have been told they have already paid the right amount of tax throughout the year or have had a small debt written off.

The total value of refunds paid out so far is $83.3 million and there are bills to pay worth $10.4 million. More batches will go out each week between now and the end of July.

Since the new system went live on April 26 it has handled:

• 7.1m logins to myIR.

• 93,833 IR3 returns filed by individuals (99% filed digitally).

• 801,732 payday filing returns.

• 690,148 Working for Families payments made, worth $152 million in total.

• 366,218 GST returns.

"We're really encouraged to see so many customers are able to get on with their business," says Greg James. "Some aspects will still take some getting used to and there are definitely some features that could be better but what we have now is far superior to the previous system.

"I think we have a great platform to keep developing and making improvements so New Zealanders continue to get the world-class tax system they deserve.