Baqir Hussain

But most often than not, when you ignore something, it only escalates and becomes worse, like any problem in life.

Communication, I think, is really important.

So ignoring the IRD is the worst thing you could do.

Would you put that as like a top five mistake or even number one?

Number one, absolutely.

The worst thing you can do is completely ignoring them.

From experience, around 70 to 80% of all problems that we see is because they just ignored IRD letters or they've not gotten proactive advice on something that they've worked on.

They started a business or changed jobs or moved jobs.

countries whether coming in into new zealand whether even moving to australia i was talking to someone two days ago who is a business owner who's moved from new zealand to australia and he has suddenly quarter of million of debt to the ird that needs to be paid but the fact is it's not sudden they've been trying to reach him for two years

Yes.

So that's one of the extreme examples.

But I think half of it is just interest in penalties that has been applied.

From ignoring it.

From ignoring it.

There you go.

And then once you get charged interest and penalties, interest is very hard to get waived off or remitted.

Penalties, sometimes you have a 50-50 chance based on what the reason for the late filing was.

For example, if it's outside...

uh your control if someone's not been well or other reasons but that's still a huge amount if once filed taxes for someone for the last 13 years and someone who's come in and who hasn't filed the tax for the last year or two they're stressed out and i tell them look

You're still not the worst case scenario, right?