Residential House building

This week Inland Revenue begins a marketing campaign aimed at trades in the residential building sector in Auckland addressing the issue of undeclared income.

Specifically the following areas are selected

• Flatbush
• Albany
• Takanini
• Silverdale

The key objective of the campaign is (over time) to encourage sub-contractors in the building and construction sector to declare all their income.

In the short term the campaign is to raise awareness among sub-contractors that they will be caught if they fail to declare all their income and will face severe penalties if they do not comply with their obligations under the tax system.

The key messages are that under-the-table jobs are not okay, it’s a tax crime.

 

Hide through ‘Trade Me’

Now IRD has obtained the personal and trading details of tens of thousands of customers.

The tax department served the online marketplace with a legal order demanding the details of nearly a million customers.

Members of ‘Trade Me’ should be paying tax if they bought something with the purpose of selling it again, traded to make a profit or had a business which involved the goods being traded. It is acknowledged the information provided by Trade Me could be used to identify those who had not paid taxes.

People might have thought they could hide on Trade Me. That’s not going to work now.

 

Declare and file all or risk everything.

IRD states that “It’s called the hidden economy because people hide their income, we can’t know for sure how big it is, but we know that last year our activities in this area brought in tens of millions of dollars in extra revenue.”

Business in the Auckland region might be recommended to contact accountants to get help to get on track or to put things right.