The IRD’s use of taxpayer money to sponsor a series of articles pushing the message that ‘tax is love’ flies in the face of hundreds of years of constitutional precedent of Her Majesty’s revenue service being above politics, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union.

Taxpayers' Union Executive Director Jordan Williams says, “The message pushed by The Spinoff and the IRD in the ‘Tax Heroes’ series could be taken straight from George Orwell’s 1984 – ‘War is peace,’ ‘Freedom is slavery,’ ‘Tax is love.’ It is taxpayer-funded ideological propaganda that undermines IRD’s role and objectivity.”

“The series wants us to believe that tax should be celebrated, while inadvertently acting as a perfect example of how taxpayer money gets wasted by out of touch bureaucrats.”

"The IRD should be the one department that is utmost politically neutral. This subsidising of neosocialist propaganda is a constitutional disgrace. It flies in the face of constitutional convention and should be quashed by the Commissioner of the IRD immediately."

“The Spinoff is the same platform that has also received money from publicly-funded outfits like Callaghan Innovation, ATEED, and Heart of the City, while producing propaganda for those very same agencies.”

“While these agencies don't have a constitutional obligation not to enter politics, the IRD does. We will be writing to the Commissioner asking for an urgent explanation."
ENDS

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