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Cheating on Taxes No Obstacle to Securing Visas

Rt Hon Winston Peters
New Zealand First Leader
Member of Parliament for Northland
5 JULY 2016

Cheating on Taxes No Obstacle to Securing Visas And Kiwi Citizenship

A bewildering disconnect between Immigration NZ, Internal Affairs and IRD could lead to New Zealand citizenship and residency granted to tax cheats, says New Zealand First.

“The Panama Papers showed this government does not take tax evasion seriously but it never struck us that it was this bad,” says New Zealand First Leader and Northland MP Rt Hon Winston Peters.

“Under the Official Information Act we asked for details of information sharing. The unbelievable answer is – there isn’t any.

“Internal Affairs, which grants New Zealand citizenship, says the Privacy Act prevents them from talking to IRD about a citizenship applicant’s tax status. Instead, Internal Affairs relies on applicants confessing all of their tax sins to them. There’s possibly a Tui billboard in that.

“Meanwhile, Inland Revenue has no clue whatsoever because ‘Inland Revenue does not record information based on tax residency’.

“The upshot is that New Zealand may be granting citizenship to people who haven’t paid a cent in tax, or worse, to those who evade it.

“It becomes even more farcical with visas, from work to residency, because Immigration NZ says ‘visa applications are not declined on the basis of tax residency, tax evasion and/or failure to pay New Zealand tax’.

“This ‘disconnected government’ is at its most ridiculous but reflects National’s immigration at all costs approach and begs serious questions over just who this government has let in,” says Mr Peters.

Attached: OIA responses from Internal Affairs, IRD, MBIE

http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/1607/Internal_Affairs_IRD_MBIE_responses.pdf

ENDS

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