Statement of Intent - 2004 - Introduction
Commissioner's introduction from the 2004-2005 Statement of Intent
Through the effective and efficient administration of the tax system, Inland Revenue collects over 80% of the revenue that funds government programmes. To achieve this, our business plan The Way Forward sets out a desired future where:
- Taxpayers and other customers meet obligations of their own accord--and Inland Revenue makes this easy
- Increasingly, the community regards paying tax as contributing to society
- Inland Revenue is visible in the community, getting alongside taxpayers
- The community regards Inland Revenue as professional, approachable, effective and efficient.
Over recent years, we have worked hard to ensure that taxpayers and other customers comply with the law of their own accord. We have:
- enhanced our services and delivery options
- implemented new electronic services
- tailored initiatives to deal with non-compliance, including the cash economy
- developed our people's skills to improve our ability to collect revenue and administer our social support programme responsibilities.
Through the work we have done so far, we are in a better position to understand New Zealanders' needs and deliver the types of services that will help them meet their obligations on their own.
To meet current and future community and government expectations, we need to continue to enhance our services and the effectiveness of our programmes to ensure we maintain and improve compliance. We therefore need to have a strong understanding of our capabilities and what influences our ability to deliver services.
Influences on our thinking
We have developed a clear view of what we want to achieve over the long-term through our outcomes:
- Revenue is available to fund government programmes through an effective and efficient tax system and administration
- Eligible families with dependent children receive the financial support they are entitled to
- Parents living apart maintain financial responsibility for their children
- Student loans are repaid.
To achieve these outcomes we need to have:
- a clear view of what we want to achieve as a tax administration--our desired future
- an understanding of the environment, including what influences compliance, taxpayers' and social support programme customers' needs and expectations, and issues that impact on our ability to achieve our outcomes
- a plan of action to move us forward--our strategic direction and the strategies and initiatives which support that direction.
In the last year we have strengthened our planning processes to ensure we have the right mix of activities and capabilities to achieve our outcomes. As part of this process we undertook a thorough assessment of our operations and environment. This process produced a range of information that included the strategic issues that will affect us in the future, and those areas that we need to address now. To ensure compliance we are:
- strengthening our customer focus to ensure compliance among specific customer groups and to enhance our focus on the delivery of our growing social support programme responsibilities
- enhancing our services to ensure compliance by providing more online services, raising the levels of taxpayers filing returns and paying tax on the due date and focusing our audit activity on high risk taxpayers, while maintaining compliance amongst lower risk taxpayers
- ensuring we have the right capability to face the challenges we will encounter now and in the future.
This Statement of Intent sets out our plans to take us forward in these areas.
Strengthening our customer focus
The number and range of people who interact with Inland Revenue is growing. For example:
- Taxpayer numbers have grown at an average of 5% per year over the past five years--companies have grown by an average of 10% and salary and wage earners by an average of 7%
- Student loan borrower numbers have increased by 10% in the past year
- Child support cases are increasing by 3% per year
- Family assistance numbers are forecast to grow by approximately 20% over the next three years as a result of Working for Families.
We need to refine our focus to ensure compliance among both new and existing taxpayers as well as social support programme customers. One of the initiatives that will help us to ensure compliance is the development of customer-specific strategies. These strategies contribute to our planning processes in terms of how we address our customer interactions. They tighten the connection between our outcomes and our high-level planning, give us greater clarity on the competing and conflicting priorities that we face, and focus our energies and actions on those things that we need to do to achieve our desired future.
Enhancing our social support programme focus
We already have a significant responsibility in the social support programme sphere with the administration of child support, family assistance, paid parental leave and student loans. We expect delivery of social programme policy services to be a growing part of our future business.
The Government's Working for Families initiative will lead to an increased level of family income assistance being provided to our customers by ourselves and the Ministry of Social Development.
We will need to ensure that:
- we have an effective interface with the Ministry of Social Development and provide a seamless service to our joint customers
- our services to customers are enhanced
- our business processes and systems take into account our expanded role.
Enhancing our services
While most New Zealanders meet their obligations of their own accord, there are always some who do not.
We recognise that in many cases, non-compliance is inadvertent and we deal with these instances in the appropriate manner. However, where there is persistent and deliberate non-compliance we need to take decisive action to ensure compliance is achieved both in the short-term and over the longer term.
We know we can improve compliance by tailoring our responses so they are appropriate to meet the particular circumstance of a taxpayer or customer. In some cases, we will provide advice and information; in others we may need to take legal remedies to gain compliance.
We expect 2004-05 will be a demanding year, with increasing levels of activity in our call centres from changes in social policy delivery and in responding to increasing levels of complexity of debt. This will make the performance targets we have set ourselves challenging.
Focus areas include:
Enhancing our online services
We want to enable taxpayers and social support programme clients to interact with us whenever they wish, as well as making it easy for them to receive information and meet their obligations. To meet these aims we already have a range of electronic filing products and secure email services that we are continuing to enhance. We are also providing new services, such as the ability to securely look up your account online, to further assist customers to comply.
Date published: 16 Nov 2004
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