The first of three $116 installments from the government to help with living expenses is due Monday for an estimated 2.1 million eligible people.
The payments were announced in this year’s budget, for those who earn $70,000 a year or less, are New Zealand taxpayers aged 18 and over, and are not entitled to the winter energy payment.
But IRD needs their current bank account details to make the payment.
Treasury Secretary David Parker dismissed the idea that the payment schedule had been rushed without enough time to set it up properly.
He told Checkpoint that IRD already had the details of more than 90 percent of those eligible for the payments, and said the payments and how they would be distributed had been widely publicized since May, so people had had time to to check if they were set up to receive them.
He believed the government had announced this “in every possible way”: including in the budget, press releases, through media coverage, through tax agents, accountants, budgeting agencies and employers.
A team of more than 700 employees worked at IRD to reach everyone eligible for the payment, and updated their records, disputing the claim that IRD said it was unable to make the payment.
“The most common way people update their data with IRD these days is on the Internet, [through] myIRD, but we do have telephone services and we have many hundreds of people doing this job.”
Parker said anyone who didn’t provide their bank account number by the time the payments were made could still claim it until the end of March next year.
He said the fact that IRD didn’t have some people’s current bank account numbers reflected that not everyone in New Zealand was required to provide them to IRD.
“We have always known that we do not have bank accounts for every New Zealander. There is no obligation to provide a bank account number… it is not mandatory”.