| 20 SEPTEMBER 2000
One in four people ringing up the Inland Revenue Department give up before the phone is answered.
Finance Minister Michael Cullen, replying to written Parliamentary questions from ACT MP Rodney Hide, said IRD had between June 19 and the beginning of September received 1.25 million calls. While 940,000 were answered, 300,000
people abandoned their call. The figures show large fluctuations in the workload at IRD. The lowest number of calls received in one week was 82,000 with
76,000 calls answered. The highest number in one week was 158,000 calls, with 96,000 answered and 62,000 callers giving up. In July, the department left about 3000 calls unanswered on
one Saturday as an unexpected flood of callers tried to confirm or query their new personal tax summaries. In response it hired more staff to cope with large unpredictable fluctuations in calls.
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Dr Cullen also said that in August IRD cleared some of its backlog of correspondence.
In July, it had 40,000 letters awaiting action or reply, including 14,500 that had been waiting for more than four weeks. In August, this had reduced to 33,000 with 12,700 more than four weeks old.
The department was criticised in August by Parliament's finance and expenditure committee for asking for $36 million more in funding after failing to make the predicted saving from
restructuring it has carried out in the past 18 months. - NZPA | See Also
In 1989 the IRS answered just 62.8 percent of taxpayer questions correctly. Since approximately 65 million inquiries were made to the "assister" program that year, 24.18 million taxpayers were given incorrect or incomplete information.
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