Fewer people receive second 'cost of living' payment after extra checks kick in
Thursday, 1 September 2022
The number of people receiving the Government’s “cost of living” payments has dropped by about 54,000 after the department tightened up eligibility checks for the controversial hand-out.
Inland Revenue reported that 1,338,000 people were receiving the second $116.67 tranche of the payment which was being paid into bank accounts on Thursday.
That is down from the 1,392,000 people who have now received the first payment, which was paid to most people who were entitled to it on August 1.
An Inland Revenue spokesperson said it was unable to confirm the extent to which the drop was due to tighter eligibility checks.
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Revenue Minister David Parker announced last week that the Government had asked Inland Revenue to conduct additional eligibility checks after it emerged that some residents who had left the country and some tourists who were previously in New Zealand on working holidays had received the first payment.
The new checks include IR screening for people have accessed their myIR accounts from an overseas IP address and then asking them to confirm their eligibility.
Those checks may be responsible for the majority of the drop in numbers, but there are several other reasons why people might receive the first payment but not the second.
Some people will have died or moved overseas or on to a benefit between the payment dates, and a small number will have been sent to prison or opted out of the payments.
The latest data from IR suggests it has made little progress over the past month issuing payments to people who were entitled to the first payment but who had not yet received it.
Delays can be caused by people not having finalised their 2021-22 tax returns.
But IR said it was also still missing bank accounts details for just under 110,000 of the people who should be entitled to the payments.
IR said 5398 people had “opted out” of receiving the payments, and 454 people had received a payment but then repaid it.
The third and final $116.66 tranche of the payment is due to be paid into people’s bank accounts on October 3.
Auditor-General John Ryan last week criticised the design of the cost-of-living payment scheme saying “speed and expediency” were prioritised over certainty and accuracy.
The Treasury had advised that the scheme, announced in the May Budget, was “poorly targeted” and would add to inflationary pressures in the short-term.