IRD's $350 cost of living payment could have been claimed by the dead. Photo / Andrew Bonallack
The initial eligibility criteria for the Government's $350 cost of living payment would have allowed it to be received by people who weren't struggling with the cost of living at all - because they are dead.
The published eligibility criteria were tightened to exclude dead people, after IRD was approached by the Herald. IRD will not begin paying out until August 1, which means no one, dead or living, has yet received the payment.
The centrepiece of the Government's inflation response, the cost of living payment was added to the Budget relatively late in the process.
An initial paper, a Supplementary Analysis Report from May 4 noted Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Revenue Minister David Parker sought six parameters to be applied to the payments - one of which was recipients be "not incarcerated or deceased".
The actual bill's explanatory note, published after the Budget last week, mentioned five criteria that were similar to the earlier paper but dropped the exclusion for deceased people.
While ministers initially flagged both "incarcerated or deceased" people should be barred from receiving the payment, only "incarcerated" people remained stated in the eligibility criteria, according to the explanatory note.
The legislation itself said the actual "eligibility requirements" would be published by the IRD Commissioner "on an internet site administered by the Commissioner".
Those eligibility requirements were published on the IRD's website last week. They were roughly the same criteria as the explanatory note and did not mention an exclusion for deceased people, only prisoners, and other criteria like income bands and having a New Zealand bank account.
Shortly after IRD was approached for comment on Monday, the website's eligibility was updated to exclude deceased people from claiming the payment.
An IRD spokeswoman said its understanding was that the timing of the website's update was coincidental, and that the absence of an exclusion for deceased people had been raised internally and it was in the process of being changed.
"One of the criteria is that they are not deceased. Inland Revenue's website has been updated to include that," the spokeswoman said.
"Inland Revenue regularly receives names and date of death information from the Department of Internal Affairs and Executors.
"This information is what we will use to check eligibility for the cost of living payments before they start going out at the beginning of August. We will also check and update this information in between payments," they said.
The payments will be made in three monthly installments, meaning people might not receive the full $350 payment if their eligibility changes over those months.
The time stamp for the website does not reflect that the eligibility for the payment was updated on May 30. It says the last update took place on May 25. Deloitte tax partner Robyn Walker said the mix-up was "illustrative of the speed at which this was developed".
"I don't think it's ideal because there's not a lot of certainty for taxpayers."
Walker said the decision to have the eligibility excluded from the primary legislation, and for the primary legislation to refer to the IRD's website gave the IRD "a bit more flexibility to work out the finer details of when it was published".
However, that flexibility raised questions about when people could be certain that the "full and final answer" to the eligibility criteria had been published.
National's finance spokeswoman, Nicola Willis, said the episode was "more evidence of how rushed this payment was".
Willis drew attention to IRD's regulatory impact assessment on the payments, which stressed the difficulty of getting the payments up and running so quickly, noting that 750 staff (fulltime equivalent) would be required to work on the payments over the months they were being rolled out.
"What National continues to think would be more appropriate would be adjusting income tax thresholds permanently for New Zealanders," she said.
National's costings for its $1.7 billion tax cut package estimated they would reach about 3.5 million people. The Government reckons the cost of living payment will reach about 2.1 million people.
Robertson has said this shows the payment is more "targeted" than National's tax cuts.
Willis, however, noted the irony that the "targeted" payment's initial eligibility criteria would have allowed it to be claimed by the deceased.
"It's the very opposite of a targeted approach when even a deceased person can be eligible for it," she said.
The payments, totalling $350, will be made to New Zealanders who earned less than $70,000 in the last tax year and who are not eligible for the winter energy payment. This means the payment does not go towards beneficiaries including superannuitants.
The payments will be made by IRD automatically. People will not need to apply for them if their details indicate they should receive the payment.
There is a risk some ineligible people will be given the payment. IRD's website says in these cases it will "only apply resources to identify such cases, and to recover payments, when there has been fraudulent or wilfully misleading information provided".
"We'll be able to use our usual debt recovery options, such as deductions from a person's salary and wages, or their bank account," the website said.