IRD workers disconnect 286,000 calls

Almost half of people who called Inland Revenue last month were hung up on.

An Official Information Act request showed 45 per cent – 286,392 calls out of 630,921 – were disconnected before entering the queue. Another 79,621 callers hung up themselves while waiting to reach the customer service team.

National finance spokesman Paul Goldsmith said the figures reflected a failure to plan for peak periods.

‘‘This is certainly not good enough,’’ Goldsmith said.

The combination of ongoing upgrades to its system and industrial relations issues, including low morale, compounded the situation, he said.

‘‘The purpose of the business transformation project was for much more of it to be done easier online and reduce the need for people to call,’’ Goldsmith said.

Goldsmith said Revenue Minister Stuart Nash needed ‘‘to crack the whip and demand better outcomes’’.

The failed phone calls was the latest technical glitch to cause headaches for Inland Revenue customers.

Last month, accountants threatened to file GST returns on paper after Inland Revenue suffered problems with its online systems.

A spokeswoman for Nash declined to comment and referred inquiries back to Inland Revenue.

Bernadette Newman, a customer segment leader with Inland Revenue, said while the volume of calls in 2018 was similar to those in 2017, some of the tax issues were more complex, increasing the average call time.

‘‘Additionally, in June we experienced some technical issues with our online myIR service,’’ she said.

‘‘This led to an increase in calls to our contact centres.’’

John Cuthbertson, tax and financial services leader at Chartered Accountants Australia and NZ said the number of failed calls reflected a developing perfect storm.

‘‘A perfect storm can arise when there are access issues with MyIR as taxpayers then seek to contact Inland Revenue through the phone system and secure email,’’ he said.

‘‘A cascading overload can result over all communication channels, especially during peak demand periods related to return filing and payment dates.’’

Inland Revenue said 80 per cent of customers in June eventually spoke to a customer service officer. But, it did not say how many times on average people called before getting through.