The Taxpayers’ Union has launched an online Privacy Act Request tool at www.IRDLeak.nz for taxpayers to find out whether their private information has been handed over to social media platforms by the Inland Revenue Department.

Taxpayers' Union Executive Director, Jordan Williams, said:

"Last week IRD were caught red-handed misusing private taxpayer information. Instead of respecting taxpayer privacy, they extracted the data from the tax system, shared it with their 'marketing department' and deliberately sent it onto social media companies.

"Many New Zealanders choose not to give their personal information to foreign social media giants. It's beggars belief that IRD chose to do it for them.

"Taxpayers have no choice but to share private and personal information with Inland Revenue. The quid pro quo is that the information is handled securely. That trust has been completely betrayed and justifies heads rolling at the very top.

"Instead of being upfront and truthful, IRD have now been caught lying to New Zealanders about the data breach.

"First they told media that there wasn't any complaints about the practise. That was untrue.

"Now they're trying to seed confusion by giving bogus assurances about 'hashing'. IRD's leadership team will know full well that it does not provide protection. IRD have even admitted that the whole purpose was to enable social media companies to identify and target individual and identifiable taxpayers.

"The 'hashing' is a convenient PR distraction tactic. It demonstrates a total arrogance towards taxpayers IRD are supposed to serve.

“Make no mistake, this is the biggest breach of taxpayer privacy in New Zealand's history, affecting hundreds of thousands of taxpayers, if not more. Having consulted with taxpayer groups throughout the english-speaking world, we cannot find any example of a privacy breach anywhere near this scale," said Mr Williams.

www.IRDLeak.nz allows taxpayers to file a Privacy Act request with Inland Revenue to requires the Department to inform them whether the taxpayer's private information was leaked.

For transparency, the site was commissioned and is hosted by the Taxpayers' Union. Unlike the IRD, the Taxpayers' Union respects taxpayers' rights to privacy. The site uses a New Zealand-owned and operated software tool to generate and send the Privacy Act requests.

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