More than two million logins to new tax system

07 MAY 2019

Customers have logged into the new myIR more than two million times since one of the largest data migrations undertaken by a New Zealand government agency.

Some 20 million income tax records, representing around $5 billion in financial transactions, were moved over to Inland Revenue’s new tax system during a seven-day shutdown of services.

Since Inland Revenue reopened on Friday 26 April, the new system has handled:

• 2.1 million logins to myIR
• 160,544 Working for Families payments made, worth $32.6 million in total
• 159,794 payday filing returns
• 83,777 GST returns
• 22,432 individual income tax returns
• 17,906 addresses updated in myIR
• 8,561 donation tax receipts lodged

“This was a monumental task – far larger than our two previous releases but we have managed to complete it successfully,” says Greg James, Inland Revenue’s Deputy Commissioner, Transformation.

Inland Revenue has been back open for 12 days following the shutdown to implement the third release in its multi-year transformation project.

“We’re pretty happy with the way the new system has been working in the first week or so but given the scale of what we’ve done there are bound to be a few bumps in the road ahead.

“The tax system that we have now is vastly superior to the one we had before and I think all taxpayers will get to experience the benefit of that.

“We realise that some of our changes will take some getting used to but we have a website that’s packed full of information and our people are trained and ready to help.”

Almost 300 people worked across 185 hours to get the new system up and running – a job that required more than 1,100 tasks to be completed.

“The scale of this year’s release puts our two previous releases in the shade,” says Mr James. “Migrating income tax records was always going to be our biggest test but now that’s been done we can begin the process of issuing automatic tax assessments later this month.”

Planning is already well underway for release four. This involves bringing KiwiSaver and Student Loan records over to the new system.

“Our transformation is running on time and under budget and is already delivering benefits to New Zealanders,” says Greg James.

Read more about the changes at Inland Revenue at www.changingforyou.ird.govt.nz.

ends

© Scoop Media