IRD closes for week over Easter for IT upgrade
Inland Revenue will close its call centres, online services and front offices for a week over Easter as it implements the fourth phase of its $1.8 billion Business Transformation project.
Deputy commissioner of transformation Greg James said the shutdown will be between 3pm on Thursday, April 9, until the following Thursday.
The department has promised recent graduates and people newly claiming Working for Families payments will be among those who see improvements when it comes back online.
From April, people who register for Working for Families payments will receive the tax deductions in their pay-packets from the time they qualify for the benefit, rather than having to wait until the end of the tax year for money to first show through, James said last month.
People with student loans will also be able to view up-to-date balances online, along with information on interest.
Borrowers who have moved overseas will be able to pay down their debts using a new fee-free facility Inland Revenue has arranged with Citibank that will provide a locked-in exchange rate.
The new system will allow Inland Revenue to send text messages to borrowers to tell them, for example, if they were about to start incurring interest charges or were falling behind on payments.
Inland Revenue aims to cut the time it takes to release employers’ KiwiSaver contributions to investors’ accounts from about 17 to 20 days, to under 10 days, from April.
Inland Revenue will also begin receiving monthly statements from organisations that pay dividends to taxpayers, instead of only receiving dividend information at the end of the tax year.
That should mean smaller end-ofyear tax bills or refunds for people with investment income.