Inland Revenue has sent four teams of auditors into the Queenstown Wanaka area and says the teams will stay "as long as it takes" to ensure speculators pay their tax dues on profits made in the white-hot property market.
Saturday, March 27th 2004, 12:45AM
by The Landlord
IRD southern service manager Carson McNeill, of Christchurch, said yesterday the four teams were carrying out comprehensive audits of property transactions.
Already, factual evidence had been found to support strong anecdotal evidence that property speculation was rife in the region.
"There are and have been some very high profiles and big money involved," Mr McNeill said.
Some of that factual evidence appears to have come from property records held by CivicCorp, the agency responsible for Queenstown and Lakes District Council land records.
CivicCorp director Rene Kampman said the IRD audit teams, from Invercargill and Dunedin, had been into CivicCorp and pulled hundreds of files.
