IRD blames employers as easy way out – again

The Inland Revenue Department (IRD) is wrong to say it is compulsory for employers to provide the Department with the correct home addresses of its employees for their KiwiSaver accounts, says David Lowe, manager of employment services at the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern) Inc.

He was responding to an article in today’s Business Herald (page 1) headed “Info gap leaves KiwiSavers in dark” that said:

“It appeared as much as 30 per cent or about 200,000 of those in the default schemes could not be contacted by their provider because of wrong information. … Inland Revenue said it was compulsory for employers to provide contact information for any staff that joined KiwiSaver and it then passed on that information to the provider.”
Mr Lowe says, “Employers can only pass on whatever details the employee provides. Employers are not compliance officers for IRD!

“Some employees don’t want to give IRD their home address, for a variety of reasons. That’s no business of the employer.

“This appears to be another case of IRD blaming employers for its own inadequate administration of KiwiSaver. Quite frankly that’s scraping the bottom of the blame barrel.”

ENDS

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