New Zealand's tax debt has hit $9.3b, prompting an IRD crackdown
Inland Revenue has sharply increased its enforcement activity, collecting $4.3 billion in overdue tax in the year to June – the highest total since 2018 – as total tax debt reached $9.3b. The department’s audit numbers rose 42% to 7641, with one in three targeting property transactions. An extra $35 million in Budget 2025 boosted the IRD's compliance funding, reinforcing the Government’s shift from pandemic-era leniency to debt recovery.
Problem areas: Baker Tilly Staples Rodway tax director Andrew Dickeson said Inland Revenue is scrutinising property sales, underpaid salaries and trust income splitting, alongside cash work and overseas companies operating in New Zealand. Its 2025 annual report shows 650 liquidation cases referred to court, up 49% year on year, signalling tougher consequences for unpaid tax. Dickeson said the IRD was typically good to deal with if people front-footed the tax issue they had and worked on making a payment plan.
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Even Australians get it - so why not Kiwis???
“Ten years ago, if a heatwave as intense as last week’s record-breaker had hit the east coast, Australia’s power supply may well have buckled. But this time, the system largely operated as we needed, despite some outages.
On Australia’s main grid last quarter, renewables and energy storage contributed more than 50% of supplied electricity for the first time, while wholesale power prices were more than 40% lower than a year earlier.
[…] shifting demand from gas and coal for power and petrol for cars is likely to deliver significantly lower energy bills for households.
Last quarter, wind generation was up almost 30%, grid solar 15% and grid-scale batteries almost tripled their output. Gas generation fell 27% to its lowest level for a quarter century, while coal fell 4.6% to its lowest quarterly level ever.
Gas has long been the most expensive way to produce power. Gas peaking plants tend to fire up only when supply struggles to meet demand and power prices soar. Less demand for gas has flowed through to lower wholesale prices.”
Full article: www.theguardian.com...
If even Australians see the benefit of solar - then why is NZ actively boycotting solar uptake? The increased line rental for electricity was done to make solar less competitive and prevent cost per kWh to rise even more than it did - and electricity costs are expected to rise even more. Especially as National favours gas - which is the most expensive form of generating electricity. Which in turn will accelerate Climate Change, as if New Zealand didn’t have enough problems with droughts, floods, slips, etc. already.
Time to Tickle Your Thinker 🧠
If a zookeeper had 100 pairs of animals in her zoo, and two pairs of babies are born for each one of the original animals, then (sadly) 23 animals don’t survive, how many animals do you have left in total?
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Poll: As a customer, what do you think about automation?
The Press investigates the growing reliance on your unpaid labour.
Automation (or the “unpaid shift”) is often described as efficient ... but it tends to benefit employers more than consumers.
We want to know: What do you think about automation?
Are you for, or against?
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9.5% For. Self-service is less frustrating and convenient.
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43.3% I want to be able to choose.
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47.2% Against. I want to deal with people.
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