David Cunliffe
Revenue Spokesperson

17 April 2013

Key and Dunne at odds on IRD service

The Prime Minister is further distancing himself from Revenue Minister and United Future Leader Peter Dunne as IRD’s customer service gets worse, Labour’s Revenue Spokesperson David Cunliffe says.

“This year John Key has twice thrown his coalition partner under the bus by publicly announcing back downs on Mr Dunne’s unfair and unworkable car park and iPad taxes.

“Now the Prime Minister’s done it again by using Parliament’s written question process to insist IRD must have service standards for dealing with calls and letters. [1]

“John Key has again publicly contradicted his Revenue Minister, because Peter Dunne has admitted IRD has no performance measures for postal transactions.

“The Prime Minister might also be irritated by Mr Dunne’s admission that no records are kept on how many taxpayers the department simply hangs up on when they get busy.”

“The service degradation at IRD is becoming a genuine crisis. The records Peter Dunne does bother to keep show a full quarter of taxpayers that do get through to the call centre won’t have their enquiries fully resolved.

“John Key seems to be distancing himself from the shambles Mr Dunne has made in Revenue this year. But the buck stops with the Prime Minister, who needs to take responsibility for his minister’s failings.

“It’s ordinary Kiwis who’ll be penalised if they can’t contact IRD to make sure they’re paying the correct amount of tax.”

[1] Corrected response to Parliamentary Written Question 3944 (2013): “RT HON JOHN KEY: I expect public service agencies to have service delivery standards in place for calls, letters, etc, as appropriate for their line of business and the particular query they are responding to. This also answers questions 3945 to 3947.”

ENDS

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