Hide hauls IRD over coals

By Brain Fallow

WELLINGTON - One business caller in seven hangs up before getting through to the Inland Revenue's new call centre for business taxpayers.

For personal taxpayers the abandonment rate, as it is called, is 12 per cent.

On some days the hang-up rate is 25 per cent or higher.

The figures reflect the first four months' operation of the five call centres which are now the primary point of contact between taxpayers and the department.

They are below the targets agreed between the commissioner, Graham Holland, and Revenue Minister Sir William Birch. Those called for a 5 per cent abandonment rate for the business "customers" and 10 per cent for personal ones.

The figures were elicited by a question from Act MP Rodney Hide. Sir William replied: "This has been a period of significant organisational change for Inland Revenue with the centralisation of the business and student loan calls from 28 sites to one, over a period of three months."

The IRD expected rapid improvement from here, as the technology had now been bedded in, call patterns were able to be analysed and resource needs more accurately predicted, Sir William said.

It was likely that some of the businesspeople trying to get through to the IRD had been inquiring about missing PAYE accounts.

An IRD letter sent to more than 6000 employers last month apologised for the fact that over the past few months the department had been unable to send PAYE statements of account to some employers. It assured them the problem had now been resolved.

On another performance measure the department appeared to be slipping, too.

In its last annual report, the department congratulated itself for a 25 per cent shrinkage in the level of live correspondence. But it had more than doubled since then.

In response to another question from Mr Hide, the IRD said it had more than 41,000 pieces of correspondence on hand, of which more than 18,000 had been received more than 21 days earlier. Most of the correspondence over 21 days old was "under action", it said.

Mr Hide said the IRD had spent $46 million in building the call centres and making staff redundant.

"The finance and expenditure select committee last year declared IRD's customer service substandard," Mr Hide said in a letter to States Services Commissioner Michael Wintringham.

"The particular complaint was the abandonment of telephone calls. The commissioner accepted that it wasn't up to scratch and promised the call centre system would remedy the problem. That hasn't worked," he said.

"You can't get through on the phone. You can't get a meeting with them. They don't answer their letters."