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Superceded by an Approved Information Sharing Agreement “Privacy (Information Sharing Agreement between Inland Revenue and Ministry of Social Development) Order 2017”. Further information is available here, and on the Inland Revenue website.
Purpose: To identify individuals who have wrongly received Working for Families Tax Credits (WfFTC) from both MSD and IR.
IR disclosure to MSD: IR provides MSD with the full name, date of birth, address and IRD number of people (and their spouse, if applicable) who are receiving WfFTC payments.
MSD disclosure to IR: For the matched records, MSD supplies the IRD number, the date that tax credits payments started and amount paid.
| Information matching provision | Tax Administration Act 1994, s.84 |
| Year authorised | 1993 |
| Year operation commenced | 1995 |
| Year replaced by AISA | 2017 |
| Programme type | Confirming eligibility Detecting illegal behaviour |
| Unique identifiers | Tax File Number |
Each fortnight, Inland Revenue uses an encrypted USB stick to send details of current Working for Families Tax Credits (WfFTC) recipients to MSD. The details includes the full name, date of birth, address, and tax file number of the qualifying person and spouse. MSD compares these details with its own WfFTC payment details.
Where an individual is found in both files and that individual has received two or more WfFTC payments during the same period, MSD sends details about that individual back to IR to have the Tax Credits from IR cancelled and, if appropriate, to establish a debt for the amounts overpaid.
| 2012/13 | 2013/14 | 2014/15 | 2015/16 | 2016/17 | |
| Payments stopped | 970 | 1,304 | 842 | 862 | 863 |
| Value of payments stopped | $300,000 | $351,087 | $220,404 | $239,335 | $246,010 |
The utility of this provision was assessed in the report “Social Welfare, Unqualified Voters and Fines Defaulters Matches (April 2011)” and again in “Unqualified Voters, Justice Fines Defaulters and Working for Families Matches (June 2016)”.
