By LIBBY MIDDLEBROOK and NZPA
It was all too much for Jan and Murray Willis.
After 14 years, the Auckland couple finally got an apology from Inland Revenue yesterday, ending a battle that cost them their business, home and an estimated $1 million.
The pair collapsed into tears as a clearly embarrassed IRD commissioner, John Perham, unreservedly apologised for his department's conduct over the Willis' ACC tax dispute.
Mr Perham told a parliamentary select committee that "I absolutely apologise both personally and on behalf of the department" for the "agony" Mr and Mrs Willis had suffered.
From his Great Barrier Island home last night, Mr Willis said the pair never expected to hear an apology from the IRD, an organisation which had cost them a "hell of a lot of our lives. We're just coping. It's been a very traumatic few hours. We certainly weren't expecting it.
"I don't know quite how we've managed to get through this as a husband and wife ... It just about destroyed us."
Mr and Mrs Willis ran an Auckland-based engineering business employing up to 400 people. In the mid-1980s they were in dispute with the IRD over the ACC categorisation of their workers. They were told to pay or be wound up and in the following years they borrowed and sold assets to pay $100,000 to the department.
In 1993, the IRD sent a letter threatening to wind up the company based on the couple's failure to appeal against a letter sent to them in 1990. The 1990 letter gave no indication of any right of appeal.
The couple said the subsequent publication of a winding-up order effectively destroyed the business when their bank refused to continue to support them.
The IRD later withdrew the winding-up order when it was discovered the company had not been told of an appeals process.
A police investigation has since found the letter was illegally tampered with, but could not prove who did it. The IRD official involved in the case has since died.
In 1996, the department realised its original demand was wrong and that it owed the couple $83,446.
But it still took the IRD another 13 months to make the payment.
Even then, the department continued to demand payments for more levies.
Mr and Mrs Willis yesterday told the finance and expenditure select committee they wanted compensation and an apology. The estimated losses of $1 million account for interest on overpayments, loss of income from the collapsed business, legal fees and losses in the "fire sale" of company assets.
"We've only continued to fight because we knew we were right," said Mr Willis.
He was heartened by Mr Perham's suggestion yesterday that they should be compensated for their losses, an about-turn on the department's position two days earlier. Mr Perham urged the couple, after talking to them personally, to take the case to the Ombudsman.
Mr and Mrs Willis plan to remain in their island home, running a business selling household power systems to remote areas.
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