A taxing listen

We will never know what W a member of the public to begin asking questions of the Inland Revenue Department earlier this year.

- Russell Brown

Was it a case of a battling business in a GST mess, a Working for Families matter? We can only surmise that the person spent what must have seemed a very long time waiting on the phone.

Thanks to IRD's policy of publishing responses to requests under the Official Information Act that "may be of interest to the wider public", we know that this citizen asked for two things: a list of the songs played to people on hold with IRD and an answer to the question: "How come the IRD still plays the same songs since, like, forever? Have yous eva thought about changin the beats that yous play when ppl ring up the IRD?" IRD duly provided its playlist as of June 2023 70 songs, structured into nine groups, each group with a single title in bold at the top ("when a customer calls and enters a queue, the hold music will start with one of the songs in bold and continue through the list").