Source: Tax Justice Aotearoa
7 October 2026
Tax reform group Tax Justice Aotearoa is extremely concerned about the announcement that Inland Revenue (IRD) will “need to operate within a 20% reduction” to their baseline budget in 2028/29, resulting in cuts to jobs.
“You can’t reduce staffing by up to 20% over three years and expect that it won’t impact on the revenue available for our public services.,” says Glenn Barclay, Chair of Tax Justice Aotearoa.
“We are really worried that this will undermine the ability of the IRD to gather the revenue we need and administer the tax system fairly.”
“Inland Revenue is the main revenue gathering agency in government and its role is critical to the effective funding of public services. We have seen the damage done in previous job cuts, with a ballooning of tax debt and fall in audit activity.”
“That position was just beginning to reverse in recent years, when in order to achieve an upturn in audit activity and start managing and collecting tax debt, staffing increased by about 16% from 2022 to 2025. So a cut of 20% will see IRD’s capacity to do its job go backwards”, says Barclay.
“If we end up with no new taxes, as proposed by National, then we will need IRD to be properly resourced to ensure compliance with existing taxes.”
“With these cuts IRD will struggle to do the bare minimum at a time, when we actually need to be investing in more expertise to be able to crack down on tax avoidance by large multinationals.”
Tax Justice Aotearoa also expressed its concern about the impact on staff at the IRD.
“They have already been through a digital transformation process and now the staff there face even more uncertainty about their future,” says Barclay.
“This will impact on staff morale, which will also have an impact on service delivery.”
“IRD is one of many government agencies tasked with reducing its baseline budget by 2% this year, and 5% in 2027/28 and 2028/29. These decisions are being made largely as a consequence of the tax cuts made in 2024 and it is a sad irony that the effectiveness of our revenue gathering will be further undermined by these cuts,” says Barclay.