Dunedin parents owe over $30m in child support
new-zealand-labour-party
Fri Aug 20 2010 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Dunedin parents owe over $30m in child support
Friday, 20 August 2010, 3:13 pm
Press Release: New Zealand Labour Party
Dunedin parents owe over $30 million in child support
Figures received by Dunedin South MP Clare Curran show that 3,721 Dunedin parents owe around $39m in child support. Of this, $24.9m is penalties.
“Over three thousand Dunedin parents are defaulting on their obligations and our children are the ones that suffer” said Clare Curran.
“The annoying thing is that reports received by Revenue Minister Peter Dunne since 2007 have highlighted this problem. Three years and another report later, the same issues are exposed. It’s about time he stopped sitting on his hands and started doing something about the situation.
“Peter Dunne promised last October that he would present a paper to cabinet ‘in a couple of weeks’, but nothing has happened. National is not taking this issue seriously at all.
Clare Curran said that her frustrations and concerns with the current child support system are backed up by a just-released report by the Office of the Auditor General on the management of child support that highlighted a number of issues with the IRD’s management of the system.
The report suggested that the penalty regime is too onerous and may actually act as a disincentive for people to meet their responsibilities. Another area of concern highlighted in the report was the lack of contact on behalf of the IRD to those who are new to the scheme.
“There is no doubt we need to ensure that non-custodial parents take responsibility for their children by paying an appropriate amount needed to ensure their children do not miss out. We can’t, however, make the system so difficult that people simply choose to opt out due to the mounting level of debt accrued through penalties and interest.
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Clare Curran said the fact that over 96% of parents liable for child support payments had incurred a penalty at some point highlighted that there is a fundamental problem in the communication between the IRD and taxpayers around the taxpayer’s obligations. The current debt is estimated to go to $7 billion by 2018 unless something drastic is done soon.
She also expressed serious concerns that the government’s lack of a plan or a strategy to address this issue is impacting upon the city’s children. “The government has no new plan or strategy. Labour is committed to developing a new scheme that protects children, that is fair to parents, and that is practical to implement,” Clare Curran said.
ENDS
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