KEY POINTS:
Music magazine editor Duncan Greive now has a black mark on his credit record, as a result of Inland Revenue's phone system.
Greive does only a few thousand dollars worth of moonlighting each year, so knew it was a mistake when he received a $600 bill for ACC levies based on that freelance work.
It turned out his full time employer, Real Groove magazine, had him on the freelance tax code.
After consulting ACC and his accountant, he discovered only IRD could rectify the mistake.
In May he began phoning. "I'd have it on redial and just hit the button every 10 minutes, half an hour or so.
"After that I got kind of frustrated but I was still probably calling a couple of times a week, and I literally never once spoke to someone."
He searched in vain for online remedies. In desperation he resorted to the old-fashioned method - an angry letter.
"I'm of a generation where the idea of sending a letter, it's not the first thing that springs to mind. It just seems so slow and obsolete."
However it had results, and Grieve acknowledges that when he finally did speak to an IRD staffer they were apologetic and efficient.
But by this time, the debt had been sent to Baycorp. Then the IRD decided to audit the journalist.
It sent him an additional tax bill for $300.
"It's still going on now," says Greive, who added that he accepts the IRD is busy and persistence is probably required.
"But this was just 'we're overloaded and we're hanging up on you, and you can't leave a message'.
"To me that's just not acceptable for any organisation, let alone probably the most important department of government."
