Brent Norling

They had not paid every single tax type you could imagine, including their staff's KiwiSaver deductions.

um and they did that for seven years and um finally it went into liquidation um and we actually acted for some creditors to hold those directors personally liable but you know it's a long process and it's a lot of cost and it's usually outside of what employees will pursue

Oh, really?

Yeah.

And I suppose the missing piece of the puzzle there is so if the taxpayers footing that bill, the ID also has the ability to hold directors personally liable for for those nonpayments as well.

Practically, though, I don't want people to get kind of confidence from this, but, you know, practically.

The amount of directors that are held personally liable, the absolute minority of cases.

I mean, I've dealt with hundreds of liquidations.

None of the restructures that we have done have resulted in a director being held personally liable for non-payment.

that would i reckon would infuriate like a lot of people listening right because they probably think well hang on like how can they do that and and get away with that yeah you know it would um and it's one of those things where like and i understand that as well it's um right now the id just does not have the resources and i suppose the

Putting it into perspective of, you know, in early 2020, tax debt was around $2.5 billion.

They didn't have the resources back then to prosecute every director who didn't pay tax.

It's now $9.5 billion, and that was from September last year, and it's been continuing to rise.

So I'm expecting the next update, national tax debt will sit at about, you know, above $10 billion.

Yes, they received some extra resources in the last budget and they've hired some resources, but it's not enough to combat that problem.

And so generally what I see is the people who get prosecuted for nonpayment are generally the people who have done it multiple times.

They've done this, trade a company, incur tax debt, liquidate, start again, and just keep doing that, you know, four or five times.

And there are people who do that.

Do you think they do it deliberately?

Nah.