Collectively, our efforts this year have gone to help maintain New Zealanders’ motivation to do the right thing when it comes to paying tax. Most customers voluntarily met their obligations, although this year has been financially stressful for many.
Customers’ tax morale has remained relatively stable compared to last year after falling in 2021 and 2022. 58% of customers felt good about paying their tax this year.
Around the world, trust in governments and societal institutions has been falling. Within this global trend, customers’ trust in us has continued to trend down slowly from past years.
People’s beliefs about tax can be influenced by many factors outside of what we do, but trust is largely driven by our customers’ experiences.
We’re staying focused on improving our services as we rebalance our overall work programme to include a broader range of compliance activities.
Getting that balance right will continue to challenge us, as will our work to:
- meet our customers’ expectations of timely, clear responses to their questions
- address debt, especially where there is a high risk of customers not repaying
- improve the experiences of customers receiving Working for Families and child support
- tackle those who intentionally do the wrong thing
- address emerging opportunities and issues from online technologies and platforms.
There’s more about our customers’ tax morale and trust in Te Tari Taake, Inland Revenue here.
You can read about what we are doing to shape the future of the tax and social policy system in the next section.
It is a great system, helped by the easy-to-use myIR. I wouldn’t have bothered chasing for receipts, filing a tax return on it. Now donate freely, upload receipt. Boom first few days in April got $330 back, nothing to sniff at.”
Customer feedback from May 2023
“I appreciated the service Inland Revenue provided throughout my solo parent journey. I was broken after a difficult breakup, lost in finding my way, lacked confidence, contacting government agencies for help was always scary, especially IR.
IR listens and then responds covering everything a customer is required to know IR’s customer service team are thorough in response, educating myself on entitlements e.g. Working for Families. I’m grateful IR does that as I and maybe other customers would be missing out on their entitlements.”
A customer in June 2023