Abdul Rafik – 
The new mobile app of Inland Revenue Department (IRD) is simplifying GST filing for small businesses and already 7270 people have downloaded it.
IRD’s myIR mobile app was developed in collaboration with the winners of our crowd-sourcing challenge called APP4IR, a competition to find a way to make it easier for small businesses to interact with the Department.
The Winners
The winners of the competition were Wellington friends Matt Innes and Josh Lee grew up together and went to school in the small Rangitikei town of Marton. The 24-year-olds are excited their ideas have come to life in an app that will benefit small businesses.
The young men beat off stiff competition to win the contest and went on to work with IRD and Sush Mobile to develop the app.
“What we have ended up with is an app that is developed by customers for customers,” IRD Chief Technology Officer Myles Ward said.
Eased procedures
myIR mobile allows people who are registered for GST and myIR online to easily file GST 101 returns (including a nil GST return), pay their tax using credit and debit card, be notified of due dates and update their personal details on their iPhone.
“This is the first version of the app and can currently be used by nearly 50,000 businesses in New Zealand. As more people download and use the app we will be listening to feedback and incorporating that into further iterations,” Mr Ward said.
He said that IRD asked customers to help make ‘myIR mobile’ great.
We have since received over 185 emails providing feedback and suggesting further functionality.
Customer Comments
“myIR mobile is very simple to use and made the process much smoother…”
“Great work on the new app!”
“Good to see you guys keeping up with the times.”
“Found the myIR mobile app extremely easy to use. I had no problems using it for the first time.”
On The Twitter
“Filing the company’s GST return using #myIR mobile. What a breeze!”
“This looks great MyIR Mobile. Well done.”
“We are determined to make paying tax simpler. People want to be able to interact with Inland Revenue 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is about saving customers time and cutting red tape.”
Something different
Mr Ward said that IRD is keen to do things differently to make life easier for businesses.
myIR mobile is a real example of how we are responding to customers’ increasing expectations of digital services.
The myIR mobile app was New Zealand’s number one business app prior to the GST filing date for January, February and March 2015.
IRD wants to hear your ideas for making tax simpler by joining the discussion at www.makingtaxsimpler.ird.govt.nz
Abdul Rafik is Community Compliance Officer at Inland Revenue Department. He can answer readers’ queries, which should be sent to venkat@indiannewslink.co.nz
If you are setting up or run a charity, and would like to attend Inland Revenue’s free tax seminars and workshops held throughout New Zealand, please visit www.ird.govt.nz (‘Seminars’).
