IRD hunts offshore Kiwi tax dodgers

Up to a dozen Kiwi tax dodgers may have cheated the Government out of up to $2 million by salting money away in Liechtenstein, but Inland Revenue is after them.

New Zealand tax authorities have joined an international hunt for tax dodgers using Liechtenstein bank accounts to avoid or evade tax.

Inland Revenue said yesterday it was aware of New Zealanders, "both past and present" with Liechtenstein bank accounts being used to avoid or evade tax and had evidence to support that.

There were "less than a dozen" New Zealanders involved.

"We are in the early stages of the audit process, but we can say the amount of tax is between $1 million and $2 million," a spokesman said last night. Penalties could be as much as 150 per cent of the initial sum owed, for tax evasion and 100 per cent for "abusive tax positions".

New Zealanders had been audited and penalised for tax evasion through foreign accounts in the past, including one case involving the British Virgin Islands.

International investigations have widened from Germany where the country's intelligence service paid an informant as much as 5 million (NZ$9.3 million) for a CD-ROM believed to contain 1400 names of alleged tax cheats, about 600 of them Germans.

- With NZPA

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