Inland Revenue says it has turned around its poorly performing call centre and is now answering calls promptly and accurately.
Last year the annual report showed that one in four people phoning the IRD gave up because it took too long to answer.
This year's annual report to June shows the average
time to answer a call has dropped from 3m 30s in 2000 to 1m 30s.
Part of the improvement was because of a slight drop in the number of calls for the first time since 1997-1998 as people became more familiar with changes to the system, including not always having to file income returns.
The department had 6.6 million contacts with taxpayers, made up of 3.99 million person-to-person phone calls, 1.5 million automated phone contacts, 950,000 items of correspondence and 180,000 personal appointments.
Last year, 32 per cent of all calls from personal taxpayers were abandoned and 19 per cent of business callers also gave up - well short of the 8 per cent target set for both groups. Overall, 25 per cent of all callers hung up before being answered.
This year, IRD did not give specific figures but said performance had improved.
Customer satisfaction and accuracy measures were also up.
In all, IRD collected $31.38 billion in the year, up $1.46 billion on the year before. The overall amount owed to IRD rose to $1.2 billion or 3.9 per cent of total revenue.
- NZPA
