Inland Revenue tells man he's dead - then asks him to sort it out

Thursday, 23 May 2019

Taxpayer needs to prove to Inland Revenue he's not dead.

Mafaufau Sanerivi laughed loudly when he was told by Inland Revenue that the tax department had closed his online account because it had recorded him as having died earlier this year.

But the humour started to fade after the Wellington bank worker was left trying to prove to an Inland Revenue automated phone system that he was still in the land of the living.

The glitch in the matrix follows the completion of a key stage in Inland Revenue's $1.6 billion Business Transformation project in April, which the department had forecast would lead to some 'small wrinkles'.

Those wrinkles have so far included Inland Revenue mailing out warnings to unknown number of babies that they might face tax bills, and a complaint by an Auckland accountant that her parents had been incorrectly billed more than $10,000 in taxes and fines.

A Masterton couple now fears Inland Revenue may also have a more serious, separate problem handling the tax affairs of people who have investment accounts in joint names.

* New $1.6 billion IRD system 'got tax calculation wrong'

* Inland Revenue admits sending tax notices to 'unknown number' of babies**

Wellington man Mafaufau Sanerivi had yet to regain access to his Inland Revenue accounts on Friday after the tax department said he was dead.

Sanerivi's problems began when he attempted to log on to the myIR website earlier this week to check his tax affairs were in order.

'It said my account was suspended. I called them the following morning and they put me on hold.

'Once they found out all my details they told me there was some sort of problem with my account and put me on hold again for another 5 or 6 minutes,' he said.

Inland Revenue later called him back 'and they said the problem with my account was that I was dead'.

'I laughed so loud. Then they told me I needed to call Births, Deaths and Marriages – they made the error but they wanted me to make the call.'

Births, Deaths and Marriages at Internal Affairs was unable to assist as it had no record of him being dead.

Sanerivi's further efforts to get the matter sorted were thwarted when he was then unable to get through to a 'real live person' at Inland Revenue and was left trying to convince an automated voice system he was alive.

'I am really fed up. Now that I am having to pick up the pieces of the mess they made, it is not funny anymore.'

A Masterton couple believes people with investment accounts that are associated with more than one IRD number could face a headache, after they experienced problems with their tax information.

Inland Revenue indicated information it had received from Internal Affairs about a death matched Sanerivi's details 'so we put a suspension on the account until we got further information'.

'Inland Revenue has set up a new process to prevent correspondence being sent to deceased people, which has been running since we reopened on April 26. It's designed so that we don't re-traumatise families by sending mail to their loved ones who have passed on,' spokesman Baden Campbell said.

'The way the system works is that if a customer finds themselves locked out, they can call us, verify their identity and we can make sure the account is fully reactivated,' he said.

'Sometimes the information from Internal Affairs is just a close match to someone in our system but we take the approach that it's better to suspend an account and have it reactivated later rather than re-traumatise someone's family with correspondence addressed to a person who has passed on.'

As well as reported glitches impacting individual tax accounts, Inland Revenue's new income system appears to be lacking functions required by some groups of taxpayers.

Masterton pensioners Andrew and Margaret Priest said their Inland Revenue accounts had been automatically populated with incorrect figures that would have led to them overpaying tax.

Andrew Priest said they had subsequently been advised by Inland Revenue that its new system could not properly handle investment accounts that were associated with more than one IRD number, which he believed could include term deposits that were held in joint names.

'This is supposed to be fixed for the next tax year, but this tax year will be a nightmare for joint/multiple account holders who incur tax liability,' he said.

Inland Revenue has been contacted for comment on that concern.

The department confirmed on Tuesday that a separate issue was impacting some businesspeople who paid provisional tax using a technique called the 'ratio method', which is designed to match tax payments with profits among businesses that experience significant seasonal variations through the year in their income.

An architect told Stuff that they were unable to submit an IR3 tax return as there was no option on an online form for them to continue to pay provisional tax or GST using the ratio method.

She had been advised by Inland Revenue that the issue was unlikely to be fixed before the deadline for submitting IR3s, she said.