IR writes to over 70,000 wrongly paid

Inland Revenue will soon write to people who it thinks were wrongly paid some or all of the $350 cost of living payment earlier this year, chief executive Peter Mersi has told a select committee.

Mersi said it expected to send the letters to between 70,000 and 80,000 people. It didn’t know all those people weren’t eligible, he said.

But the number of letters appears to give the best indication to date of the maximum scale of the incorrect payments. The letters would tell people ‘‘what they should do next’’, Mersi said.

They would set out the process people should follow if they thought they were entitled to the payments, and would provide information on how to return the payment if they were not entitled to them, he said.

The tax department has previously indicated it would not take enforcement action against people who were mistakenly paid out.