The SOC stated in paragraph 32 that prior to the Panel being convened, MSD made no decisions about enforcement action in relation to any case. They responded by saying some cases were sent to debt collection but did not say how many. Documents show that they wanted to complete wage subsidy work in December 2020. They […]

The Jobkeeper wage subsidy was available for 12 months to 31 March 2021.  It was administered by the Australia Tax Office who had access to the past income of businesses and they required verifying evidence to be provided. As a result, 900,000 businesses applied compared to 760,000 in New Zealand. However, the ATO was not

In August 2021 the Finance and Expenditure Committee of Parliament reported on the wage subsidy and endorsed the criticisms and recommendations made by the Auditor-General. The following quotes and notes were made about their report: The MSD has not fully implemented three of Deloitte’s recommendations: NOTE:  This implies that they fully implemented 9 recommendations, including

AUDITOR-GENERAL 21 DECEMBER 2021 LETTER TO FINANCE AND EXPENDITURE COMMITTEE REGARDING PROGRESS BY MSD ON IMPLEMENTING OAG RECOMMENDATIONS. This long letter gave a rosy picture of the work being done by MSD and it did not take into account the information we later put together for our documents on MSD review failures,  MSD misleading claims

The Reserve Bank created $50 billion to support the economy and part of this was used for the wage subsidy but about $20 billion was overpaid.  This money was used to push up the prices of houses and assets and this created inflation. Now rents and mortgage costs have increased and other factors are causing

SAMPLE OF 1,000 The May 2021 report by the Auditor-General on the wage subsidy stated: 4.77 As part of our 2019/20 annual audit of the Ministry of Social Development, our Appointed Auditor recommended that the Ministry write to recipients of subsidy payments to seek re-confirmation that they complied with the requirements and obligations. This is

Most of the businesses and professional firms we have personal knowledge of have wrongly obtained or retained part of the wage subsidy they received.  They were able to work almost normally and suffered no genuine decline in revenue. We have not complained about them because we have concentrated on the big picture and we did not

(Refer to TREASURY OIA RESPONSE FEBRUARY 2021) ADVICE TO MINISTER OF FINANCE  21 March 2020 REGARDING REMOVING CAP OF $150,000 Description: This paper proposes options for Cabinet to: Remove the cap of the existing Covid-19 wage subsidy scheme to increase the coverage of the scheme to more employees in larger firms. Treasury supports the expansion

Statistics show that wage subsidies were paid for more workers in some industries than the number officially recorded. Tourism and hospitality businesses were far more badly affected than other businesses but many were able to make up their lost revenue after the lockdown and some repaid the wage subsidy.  Inner city cafes and restaurants were