Reprinted from:
http://cryptome.org/0001/nz-tax-charade.htm
17 August 2009
I’m a long time Inland Revenue NZ employee of 20 years I have many frustrations with incompetent managers, absolute waste of taxpayer money, illiterate team leaders ( ‘waist bin’ in team minutes is not a typo, it’s a spelling mistake), a workplace bully, Carol Buckenham, who has had extraordinary protection, even by my union delegates, failed payroll systems, failing tools, and last but not least a tax system which is designed to overdeduct tax, but which the IRD adverts sold as ‘you never have to file a tax return again’ allowing a company to set up a very succesful business giving people back the money the government hoped they wouldn’t claim …
There’s also penalising of low income taxpayers but almost no scrutiny of huge refunds going out the door — my job was to check refunds of over $100,000 and I was told on Friday to do this at the rate of 9 per hour, if that was the work given to me.
In this case it was me the payroll system failed to pay — twice — and they had no idea why and asked me to get a bank statement to prove I wasn’t paid as they thought I had been. Complaints got me nowhere, requests for information got me nowhere and finally four official information requests (our FOIA equivalent) resulted in either no information, or on the last day an extension could be requested in a well-defined form, simply a statement that I’d be charged NZ$38 per half hour, without specifying what would be provided, when, or even whether they’d search all night for non-existent info.
Basically the New Zealand Inland Revenue Department believes it’s above the law.
Our code of conduct states in the preamble that the actions of the department should be able to withstand the closest public scrutiny — however Inland Revenue doesn’t open itself to any scrutiny. In an effort to draw attention to this and a major abuse of process …
… I drove my car through the Christchurch NZ Inland Revenue’s closed front entrance, through two sets of glass doors, through the staff only door, then backed out into the foyer to wait for police.
You sure as hell wouldn’t know it from Google or the papers. It was on Saturday morning and it’s now Monday night.
I filmed an interview, across from the patched up hole, done by our local television station CTV. I popped in there today because I’m out on bail of NZ$500. In fact today they forgot to serve a tresspass order so I walked inside, showed my tag, and almost got access through to the staff only area. This is symptomatic of the place — I’ve dealt with stupidity by pointing it out when and where it occurs and can give you megabytes of examples because I just BCC’d myself in on the responses. Walking out with taxpayer information (which I haven’t done — I have absolute integrity with regard to taxpayers) would be as simple as photographing the terminal the information is on.
Some of this is comic, some serious, but all worthy of public discussion. However the NZ Inland Revenue while driving staff harder for less, doesn’t permit any discussion. Discussion at team meetings is cut off if the team leader can even understand it.
This all sounds surreal, but I’ve played music, my job supported that, and part of their action screwed with my music. So one group have added a webpage where we intend to put everything up relating to the crash.
A sample page is at:
http://theaxemen.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/mick-elborado-the-car-crash-set/
We’re taking the piss and they know it. But Inland revenue have some pretty heavy lawyers — they’ve just upped the charge to Criminal damage which is 7 years maximum.
Can you add this to the Cryptome Collection? I assume then it would be archived on the DVD and any gag orders redundant. I did everything I could through the system. The checks and balances that should catch incompetence or bias failed. Also the checks that should stop Carol, the bully mentioned above from calling staff native to the country ‘my little black jungle bunny’ and then claiming it was a joke. In fromt of maybe 20 staff who all look the other way. She also tried to get me committed but my sanity hopefully is reasonably evidenced by the fact I’m on bail and not in jail.
It’s late … I’m tired … far more of this if you want it, my stack of paer is about 6 feet high. I’ve been with the place 20 years and believe it’s time the public scrutiny test was applied. I’ll name names, give detailed analyses of abuses, failures, incompetence. If our media is too scared to deal with it I will pass it to you until I’m gagged. I’ve played this for laughs to keep sane and am proud of some of there responses and the fact they couldn’t fire me, and it was I that ”was the decider” as our HRSouls put it.
If my kinetic statement about ‘moving forward’ won’t do it, I invite you to. I’ll give you the information until I’m stopped, principally so the low income NZ taxpayers see that a tax system called fair by IRD certainly isn’t t fair to them
Cheers
Dave Theobald. (aka Mick Elborrado)
Far out! You are as dangerous with the keyboard as you are with a bass!
Hope yr ok. Best wishes- Rob
Cheers Rob — check me out when I finally learn to play the saw!
David david david…. Been a few years son but I have to say, when you want to say something you sure as hell do not pull any punches. I have read your blog and facebook and have a little bit of advice.
when you have written something take a coupla minutes out and re read it before posting. (Even get someone to check it.)
When I read the news release at lunch time and saw the news tonight you had my undying support. However when I read some of your comments here and on facebook I was left with the impression that you were a complete nutter. Whats going to happen is that people will lose sight of the real reasons behind your protest and focus on the ramblings and switch off. Your better than that so I expect to see an improvement…. I take it the anogram SMART is still used these days.
Later bro.
Hey Tails — I’m with my frends on Facebook — they know me or should if they’re friends, and I sing a song called ‘psycho’ once ion a while as well — so how did you read ’em — through someone who is my friend I guess, who knows me, cause I don’t know no tails — I was held in CHCH police station for less than 24 hours after driving my car through three glass doors at the tax department.
Read the arrest report of the incident then, tails me old friend of a friend read what time I was on Facebook. You’re the kind of person who says i sound like a nutter — um, I have treated mental illness, wouldn’t call myself a nutter though. When I sing ‘Mama, just killed a man’ I’m singing Bohemian Raphsody not emulating the unfortunate Lee Harvey Oswald.
And wait a minute ‘tails’ you saw the news item (dissected on cryptome.org butI’ll put it up as note On FB for all) and I have your ‘undying sympathy’???
Umm — ‘he admits to being a paranoid and a depressive’, ‘..kamikaze gesture.. catharsis
Doesn’t take much to arouse your sympathies — looks like Mohammed Atta would get them as well.
Stop writing fiction — If I can handle IR you’re not going to be able to even respond with your real name to this.
If we do know each other — If I ‘take a few minutes out’ I’m wasting them at present. My friends know me, and where were you when I wasn’t in the news. Heads. You lose.
And actually you’re probably a manager — I don’t do corrections often, but the abnogram isn’t an anagram it’s an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely.
OK Tails — what does D/S mean in IR
Sorry — didn’t take those precious minutes — I responded using ‘abnogram’ you wrote ‘anogram’, I presume you intended ‘anagram’, but as noted just above the top of the monitor SMART is an acronym. Google it to be sure — I come off as a nutter on the internet.
I would have thought your comments here would be succinct enough to sway anybody who didnt approach this issue without any preconcived bias and am somewhat astounded by Tails above comments which seems predetermined to undermine you friends of friends indeed (what is a friend twice removed?)
your unlikly to get unbiased treatment from the mainstream media without the support of recognised celebritys you have negligible entertainment value
and be of only passing value to them and news space is time and mesured by media editors in $ terms there is no unbiased media am really curious to know how your case will be presented in court and how much understanding your friends have of the issue beyond the gesture of the action you were forced into
A friend twice removed is a friend indeedindeed I assume. Although having been twice removed from more than a few places on a frienldy basis myself…