Four Inland Revenue staffers were fired after they accessed a taxpayer's account. Photo / NZ Herald
Four Inland Revenue employees who all accessed a taxpayer’s account without permission have been fired.
Smita Nalawade, Gina Thompson, Punipuao Fatu and Bimlesh Sharma had received a team-wide email warning staff not to communicate with a specific taxpayer if they called.
But when the taxpayer’s account details were included in the email, the four employees secretly accessed the account, which led to them losing their jobs.
The employees later went to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) in an attempt for interim reinstatement, as well as permanent reinstatement.
Authority member Eleanor Robinson first addressed the urgent interim reinstatement applications, finding in four separate decisions that the former employees had breached Inland Revenue’s (IR) Code of Conduct.
“IR must have a significant level of trust that employees are acting in accordance with the Code of Conduct,” she wrote.
While the four were not successful in their applications for interim reinstatement, a further investigation meeting will take place later this year to consider permanent reinstatement.
According to the ERA, the incidents occurred on the afternoon of October 24, 2025. An email was sent to team leads from the IR domain specialist in complaints management.
It asked team leads to notify their staff that complaints management was managing a situation with a taxpayer.
“Can you please let your teams know they may receive a call from [the taxpayer] … they are to advise him he is being managed by complaints, and we will contact him. The officer can then disconnect that call," the email read.
It ended with “please do not engage with [the taxpayer]”.
The taxpayer’s full name and IR were included in the email, so staff knew who it was and not to engage with them.
Shortly after, Nalawade, Thompson, Fatu and Sharma took those details and accessed the taxpayer’s details.
Nalawade was the first, entering the account just one minute after she had received the email from her team lead. She told the ERA she wanted to check if she had previously communicated with the taxpayer, which she hadn’t. She then exited the account.
Sharma, who was just two days into a new role in the Families team, was the next to access the account and stayed in it for more than half an hour. He told the authority that he was learning about the case to be able to answer questions about the taxpayer with his team.
Thompson went in just two minutes after she received the email and also told the ERA that she wanted to see if she had previously dealt with the account.
Fatu, who had worked at IR for 36 years, was the last to access the account. She told the authority she was looking to see whether she had dealt with the taxpayer and, if so, whether she had used the wrong process.
During this time, an email was sent which said: “A quick note – if you don’t have business being on someone’s account, do not access it. (I.E the email I sent out earlier). Just a reminder for you all.”
While the four employees did not tell their team lead that they had accessed the account, other employees who accessed the account reported it, which set the four apart from the rest, IR told the ERA.
It was uncovered that the four had accessed the account through the IR’s integrity and internal assurance team, which monitors the company’s database.
An investigation was undertaken by IR and all four were dismissed for serious misconduct in late December 2025.
An IR spokesperson said it could not comment on the ERA decisions.
ERA’s Robinson investigated the four separately and found none of them had grounds for interim reinstatement as they all had a “weak arguable case”.
“Nalawade breached a fundamental business rule and the seriousness of this action was her dismissal which was the appropriate outcome,” she said in Nalawade’s decision.
“These circumstances make it impossible for IR to have the requisite trust and confidence in her which is essential given her often unmonitored access to vast amounts of sensitive information.
“Although IR undertakes regular checking and auditing of system access, proportionally few accesses are able to be reviewed or scrutinised given the volume of work that occurs.
“Consequently, IR must have a significant level of trust that employees are acting in accordance with the Code of Conduct.”
A substantive hearing for Nalawade and Thompson has been set down for October to address permanent reinstatement, while case management conferences will be held for Fatu and Sharma to progress the matters to a substantive investigation.
Brianna McIlraith is a Queenstown-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the lower South Island. She has been a journalist since 2018 and has had a strong interest in business and financial journalism.