Long wait for the taxman to answer your call? This might be why

Friday, 6 March 2020

Inland Revenue is preparing for another wave of change (first published February 2020).

Long waits for someone to answer the phone at Inland Revenue (IRD) have been blamed on fewer staffers answering the phone.

Call taker numbers were released to a Nelson man so fed up with trying to get hold of the monolith's call centre, he made an Official Information Act request to find out why.

The department initially tried to refuse the request until the Ombudsman intervened, and its data comparing similar days in 2015 and 2020, showed there were 284 fewer IRD staff taking calls in 2020.

While on January 23, 2015, 761 staff were answering calls, on January 24, 2020, that number was just 477, a decrease of about 37 per cent. Both days were Fridays.

* IRD bulks up call centres to handle 'biggest tax change in a generation'

* Inland Revenue contact centre workers thought contracts were 'a joke'**

The IRD said those figures did not necessarily represent the amount of staff taking calls on a regular basis.

Mapua resident Paul Bensemann didn't take no for an answer after failing to get through to the IRD, sending out an OIA request to find out how many staff were available on the day he called them.

Former journalist Paul Bensemann requested the figures after a day of frustration trying to get hold of the IRD on behalf of his daughter, who was seeking advice about delaying her provisional tax payment while trying to set up her dental practice.

'My daughter didn't have time to keep trying. She was pulling her hair out so I offered to help, but I couldn't get hold of them either.'

Throughout the day on January 24, Bensemann said the only communication he got was an 0800 recorded message saying 'due to excessive demand at that time, IRD was not accepting calls'.

With any response to email communication likely to take up to several weeks, his daughter gave up and put through the provisional tax payment, despite the expense.

Previously published numbers of full time call centre staff ranged between 400, 900 including part-time workers and1225, including 900 full-time workers.IRD now says it has more than 2000 staff who take calls.

In its response to Bensemann customer segment lead Bernadette Newman said the IRD was two-thirds of the way through an overhaul of its systems, the first of its kind in two decades, which would let people do more online, reducing the need for phone calls.

'We planned extensively for the increased demand caused by the most recent changes, but, at times, call volumes have still resulted in significant overloading. Everything we're doing now is aimed at setting our customers up for success for next year.'

Bensemann said it was a 'cart before the horse' approach.

'I can't understand their logic – it doesn't make sense they would cut the staff numbers before they set up an online service. I'm annoyed IRD has been blaming callers for overloading the lines. It's obvious from the OIA response the problem has been caused by reducing call-centre staff.'

IRD deputy commissioner Sharon Thompson said the IRD brought in additional people at peak times, with extra staff being available to support customers in the coming months, as further changes were introduced during the 2020 tax season.

Thompson said the IRD no longer had staff whose sole job was to answer phones in the call centre, instead having broader based roles within the workforce.

Its changes would be live in April 2021, and fully completed in mid-2021.

While IRD didn't specifically forecast a decrease in phone contact, it anticipated a significant increase in digital uptake. Already 89 per cent of returns were filed online.

'We expect the number of calls to drop over time as more customers either have no need to contact us or can do more for themselves online. The flow on effect will mean staff can spend more time helping customers who call with complicated tax issues that need to be talked through.'