Privacy Act 2020

Annual report

Purpose: To enable the Ministry of Justice to locate people who have outstanding fines in order to enforce payment.

Justice disclosure to IR: Justice selects fines defaulters for whom it has been unable to find a current address, and sends the full name, date of birth, and a data matching reference number to IR.

IR disclosure to Justice: For matched records, IR supplies current address and all known telephone numbers for the person, the name, address, and contact numbers of the person's employer or employers, and the unique identifier originally provided by Justice.

Compliance: Compliant.

Technical information

Information matching provision	Tax Administration Act 1994, Schedule 7 Part C subpart 2 cl 43
Year authorised	1998
Year commenced	2002
Programme type	Locating people
Unique identifiers	Data Matching Reference Number

System description

On a daily basis Justice uses an encrypted and password protected USB device to send details of fines defaulters whom they have lost contact with to Inland Revenue. Justice sends the full name, date of birth, (and a unique identifier which is generated and used solely in this programme) about the selected fines defaulters. IR attempts to match the fines defaulter information with taxpayer information using the full name and date of birth. A maximum of 20,000 records is allowed per supply.

For matched records, IR provides an encrypted USB device to Justice with details of the current address and all known telephone numbers for the person, the name, address, and contact numbers of the person’s employer or employers, and the unique identifier originally provided by Justice. Each match record supplied by IR includes a match indicator code that represents how well the records matched.

Recent activity

	2016/17	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21*	2021/2022*
Match runs	202	223	213	178	227	142
Records sent for matching	2,169,098	2,546,697	2,225,987	2,266,824	3,403,760	1,043,996
Possible matches identified	596,203	597,359	377,466	526,103	817,806	321,199
Notices of adverse action	135,828	146,944	118,058	241,341	292,638	172,838
Challenges	807	463	261	493	1,025	446
Successful challenges	70	195	137	196	60	65

The increase in Successful challenges in 2017/18 resulted from a programming error when IR implemented the match in their new computer system. As a result, Justice sent 3,448 notices of adverse action in error. When the error was noticed, Justice suspended the operation of the match until the error was fixed.

Financial Outcome Activity

We report combined totals for this programme and the MSD/Justice Fines Defaulters Tracing Programme because Justice cannot always determine which programme resulted in the payment of an outstanding fine.

Paid/settled ($)	2016/17	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21*	2021/22*
IR	14,080,132	16,156,005	6,896,485	17,881,362	24,258,495	10,205,001
MSD	16,891,118	14,584,553	5,262,520	16,203,922	22,917,006	5,983,498
Both	2,381,239	1,606,293	3,764,018	2,941,714	59,395	508,518
Total paid/settled ($)	33,352,489	32,346,851	15,923,023	37,026,998	47,234,896	16,697,017
People with payment or remittal	2016/17	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21*	2021/22*
IR	48,590	46,386	29,136	75,174	107,275	40,494
MSD	46,869	39,863	21,340	72,069	92,018	25,834
Both	5,850	4,403	16,909	13,114	261	2,622
Total people with payment or remittal	101,309	90,652	67,385	160,357	199,554	68,950

*The figures for the most recent are provisional figures and will be updated after the next reporting period.

Data matching was suspended for the period 23 March 2020 - 14 May 2020. The decision to suspend data matching was in response to the New Zealand wide COVID-19 Lockdown (Alert Level 4 and Alert Level 3).

The utility of this provision was assessed the report Immigration and Justice Matches (September 2012), and again in a report Review of statutory authorities for information matching (September 2017).

The operation of this programme was assessed in a report Review of statutory authorities for information matching (Sept 2017).