The fund includes house rental refunds, deposits from closed or unused
bank accounts, uncashed cheques, owed wages, holiday pay, victim support payments, royalties, phone and power company credits, inheritances, lawyers’ trust funds, life insurance policy payouts and proceeds of items left and sold in hotels, motels and hostels.
After weeks of lobbying the department to cough up my $1506.78, I am wondering if this little-known and growing gold mine should be run by some new organisation dedicated to returning it to named original recipients like me.
In June 2020 then Revenue Minister Stuart Nash said in a statement titled “Forgotten funds and missing money” that, by November 2019, unclaimed money in the Crown’s accounts had reached $199 million. In the year to November 2019, Inland Revenue had returned just $2.4m to its “rightful owners”, he said.
IRD’s main job is to collect money, not dish it out. Rather than tracking down beneficiaries – equivalent to nearly 8% of New Zealanders – the department is relying on us, or our friends and family, to discover we are on the list. It also demands proof of where the money has come from, which is almost impossible for those like me who have no idea.
The department will give clues, but not necessarily enough to claim. On July 8, in response to my request under the Official Information Act (OIA), seeking details of the $1506.78, it said the money relates to a company I had shares in “sometime between 1993 and 2018″.
The early date is a worry, because as Martelli McKegg lawyer Lee Harris has explained, “If the owner does not claim funds within a 25-year period, IRD is entitled to remove those funds from the list … There is no right of claim against IRD once money has been delisted.”
In May Jane Phare wrote in the Herald that because of this 25-year deadline, the oldest listed figures were currently dated 1999 and next year these “will have been transferred to the Crown. Last year, $206.1m of New Zealanders’ unclaimed dosh was transferred”.
The money excludes tax refunds, but IRD is using tax legislation as a gatekeeper.
On July 15, in a further response to my OIA and other messages, IRD said there were two relevant documents but it is bound by “strict confidentiality provisions … of the Tax Administration Act 1994 (TAA) as it directly relates to a specific individual”.
My full name is listed, only one Paul Morel Bensemann exists, and it seems I am being protected from a request, by me, for information about myself.
I asked the department, “I would be grateful if you could include information about all attempts at contacting me.” IRD replied, “The volume of claims and the need for verification do not allow the Unclaimed Monies team to proactively contact customers… the 10 to 12-week timeframe for processing unclaimed money claims is due to the workload and the thorough verification process.”
I knew nothing until first cousin Julie messaged me in February. She had read Herald columnist Mary Holm’s tip-offs about the fund and searched for Bensemanns owed money on an IRD webpage.
IRD’s list says the previous “holder name” of my money was “ANZ Bank Limited”. I have had two responses from ANZ, on July 1 and 17, saying it is investigating but “it is a little bit of a different and difficult situation, and we need to be careful not to provide details that may potentially be a breach”.
The latest hints from IRD, after my persisting, concern a farming firm based in Taranaki that “may have been sold to overseas buyers”. I can’t recall shares in such a firm, IRD suggested I try Computershare. Computershare said, “We do not have a report to provide nil holdings of shares” and has referred me back to ANZ.
My next step is to target IRD, ANZ and Computershare’s archives under the Privacy Act. The act’s information privacy principle 6 says, “An individual is entitled to receive from a government agency or New Zealand business “access to their personal information”.
Like other experienced journalists, I have come to know that act, the Official Information Act, the powers of the Ombudsman and bureaucratic barriers.
In coming months, I am confident, the Inland Revenue Department will give me my $1506.78.
I am equally confident most of the other 415,828 or so people will not be so lucky.
