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Dealing with the IRD
One of my biggest concerns recently has been this massive looming PAYE bill. When we first hired people, we were idiots and forgot to setup PAYE, a year later, I was lumped with this massive potential bill + interest + penalties + you-are-a-bad-person fines. EEK.
So Komal filled out all the forms and we went to the accountant who said potentially they would let us off the bad-person fines but life was not looking rosy. So we sent them in and this morning I bit the bullet and called them to try to get something sorted.
In the first five minutes talking to them, the IRD went from the one organisation I never wanted to talk to, to like my new best friend.
Apart from being super calm and helpful and friendly, they did not make me feel like a bad person (which these days, I find vitally important). And my tax bill was not so frightening… Turns out the bad-people-fines probably only exist if they have to hunt you down instead of you coming forward. So I have set up a payment plan and will slowly sort it out. It was very easy really.
We all complain about the Government and our Taxes and the IRD so much that I think we trick ourselves into think they work against us, not for us. So I just want to thank the nice woman who accepted that we all make mistakes and made it super easy for me to sort out mine. Go the IRD!
Hello, my name is Natalie, I have a business called 
February 26th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I had a really similar experience with the IRD. When the phone call was about to end I was actually kinda speechless. I could only manage to stutter: “Thanks… you’ve been… really… really… help…ful.”
In my utopia they’d ditch all taxes save for GST and bump it up to 20% (or whatever). Soooooo much easier to manage and think about than any other tax. :)
February 26th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
The worst thing is I know it was my fault and sometimes you just feel so disorganised because you have so many different types of taxes to pay at so many different times and thinking about it is not high on my priority list – and you feel like a criminal because we’re all such law abiding citizens…
So it’s just really good to know they just want to help you get out of your mess.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:40 am
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February 29th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
… are you just saying that because there are 600 IRD staff within 750 metres of your office :) Bet you see them all the time in Subway…