Inland Revenue says it has resolved problems with its GST processing system. It blamed the issue on a network load balancer at its telecommunications provider. The problem was fixed quickly by the telco, IR said.
The problem had been initially attributed to customer log-ins but IR said some very specific customer feedback yesterday had led to the problem being identified.
IR apologised to affected customers in the lead up to the GST filing date, and said most were now managing to file their GST returns. “For example 18,000 did yesterday, which is around what we would expect,” it said.
IR said other activity had not been affected. “Last week there were over 700,000 logins to our online services, with 98.9 percent within our service standard of six seconds,” it said. “Nor does it affect Best Start, which will be processed as planned from 1 July.”
However IR’s explanations did little to appease the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. Executive director, Jordan Williams, said there appeared to be system-wide failures with IR’s IT systems.
“Inland Revenue’s website has been having major reliability issues, based on the huge volume of complaints we’ve been receiving from our members,” he said.
“Not only is the website down, tens of thousands of New Zealanders have been unable to get through to the call centre and we understand this number is growing.”
Earlier in June IR was forced to apology after New Zealanders took to social media to vent their frustrations with delays in getter responses from IR’s call centre.
Williams called on revenue minister Stuart Nash “to get to the bottom of what’s going on and explain to taxpayers when it will be fixed.”
The glitch is the latest in a series, On 26 June Radio New Zealand reported that Inland Revenue Department had admitted its computer system would not cope with a $60-a-week payment for new parents scheme due to begin on 1 July.
“It means staff will have to manually put in the details of parents in line for the Best Start payment, which is part of the Government's flagship Families Package, to ensure they don't miss out,” Radio NZ said.
Radio NZ said it had been told by Inland Revenue that it had chosen to manually process Best Start applications for the first few weeks of July to enable it to focus on processing annual 7 July income tax returns and ensure New Zealanders received their tax refunds as soon as possible.