Latest / Best of Business / Tony Morris: IRD Customer Segment Manager on the IRD revealing NZ businesses owe over $1.4 billion in unpaid taxes

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Tony Morris: IRD Customer Segment Manager on the IRD revealing NZ businesses owe over $1.4 billion in unpaid taxes · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio together Duper c Allen.
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  Speaker 2: Eighteen past five. Now there is get a load of this,
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  Speaker 2: almost one and a half billion dollars left in unpaid
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  Speaker 2: GST and pay aye business tax from last year's tax here.
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  Speaker 2: Over a billion of that is just the GST. Tony
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  Speaker 2: Morris is the iid's customer segment manager and with us,
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  Speaker 2: Hey Tony, hey, thanks having on, Yeah, thank you. It
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  Speaker 2: seems incredibly high. Is that higher than previous years or
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  Speaker 2: about normal?
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  Speaker 3: Definitely going up the dep what's going up each year
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  Speaker 3: by about a billion dollars. So and as you say,
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  Speaker 3: a lot of that's TST and employer text, but it's
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  Speaker 3: in line sort of with what's technic overseas as well.
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  Speaker 3: But definitely an area we're putting more focus on now
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  Speaker 3: thinking about that.
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  Speaker 2: Is this a sign of how much streets businesses are under?
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  Speaker 3: Definitely we think it's some of that. Also a bit
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  Speaker 3: of a sign that during COVID we eased off our
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  Speaker 3: decollection activities a little bit around and didn't didn't push
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  Speaker 3: as hard so and we didn't probably look to help
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  Speaker 3: businesses or recreate businesses then that were struggling to survive.
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  Speaker 3: So what we're seeing is a bit of an increase
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  Speaker 3: in the man of companies getting in debt, and some
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  Speaker 3: of those are the ones that possibly would have failed
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  Speaker 3: earlier during COVID, So we're definitely seeing an increase. And
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  Speaker 3: what we need to do and what we're looking at
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  Speaker 3: is how do we get to the pa y and
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  Speaker 3: the jest earlier as soon as they're going to debt,
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  Speaker 3: because once people get into debt, it could be hard
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  Speaker 3: to get out of. So we're certainly focusing on that.
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  Speaker 2: I can understand why construction is the worst, but I'm
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  Speaker 2: kind of surprised that the next stuff is real estate services,
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  Speaker 2: rental and hiring. What explains that.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not not sure. That's a step that we've
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  Speaker 3: sort of seen. I know that that comes from our
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  Speaker 3: area and been put like that what we sort of
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  Speaker 3: seeing in some of the stuff we're doing at the moment.
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  Speaker 3: Certainly small businesses are struggling the most with the debt
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  Speaker 3: and also the amount that we ride off, so right
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  Speaker 3: across that small business area, which could be in the
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  Speaker 3: real estate services or other areas like that. But certainly
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  Speaker 3: the construction area is an area sort of in the
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  Speaker 3: bigger at the bigger end of town that we do that.
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  Speaker 3: And what we're seeing in some of the areas is
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  Speaker 3: that instead of people paying entities, paying their pay or GST,
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  Speaker 3: they're actually using US as a bit of a bank
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  Speaker 3: because it's probably easier to get the money. I was
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  Speaker 3: at a conference today where that came up quite clearly
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  Speaker 3: from the outside world. It's easy to get money off
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  Speaker 3: US PEPs and borrow. So that's something we need to
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  Speaker 3: look at and change, sure other policies or just being
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  Speaker 3: a bit more firmer to our approaches.
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  Speaker 2: I'm sure that's not really what you want, Tony. Thanks
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  Speaker 2: very much, Tony Morris, I ad Customer Segment Manager.
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