NBR’s copyright fight exposes how IRD quietly built its rich-person watchlist

What IRD actually did with the Rich List

Inland Revenue has confirmed something wealthy business owners have long suspected. For years, the tax department used the NBR Rich List as an intelligence tool to decide whether a prominent New Zealander deserved closer attention.

In a statement, an IRD spokeswoman said that up until 2020 the department purchased hard copies of NBR’s Rich List and cross-referenced the list against its own records to work out whether individuals should be added to its high-wealth customer base. It was, in IRD’s own words, used as a “sense check” against internal analysis.

That compliance programme is not small or theoretical. IRD actively monitors high-wealth individuals with assets above $50 million, and above $20 million where complex structures or unusually low effective tax rates are in play. Historically the department ran a dedicated unit to audit high-wealth individuals it believed controlled more than 3,500 companies, trusts and other entities, matching questionnaire responses against media reports, the Companies Office, Customs, finance institutions and overseas tax authorities.

The department says it stopped buying hard copies in 2020, has used only publicly available Rich List information since 2021, and that its reliance on the list has fallen away as its analytical tools have improved. That last phrase is the one to sit with. IRD is not saying it has stopped watching wealthy people. It is saying it no longer needs a magazine to find them.

The copyright fight that opened the door

The reason any of this is now public is a dispute over intellectual property. NBR co-editor Hamish McNicol raised the matter with the Ombudsman’s office on 18 July 2026, questioning whether IRD had breached copyright or subscription terms by copying Rich List data into internal databases or sharing a single subscription across staff.

McNicol put it bluntly, saying there was “a suspicion they may have copied large parts of previous Rich Lists into internal databases, without our consent”.

The legal question is narrow. The principle underneath it is not. A government agency with coercive powers was using a private publication’s editorial estimates as an input to compliance decisions. And these are estimates. The most recent Rich List profiled 150 individuals and families with collective wealth of $129 billion, but those are journalists’ calculations, not audited accounts. At least one Rich Lister has already publicly questioned the legitimacy and methodology of IRD’s wealth work, and that concern stands regardless of anyone’s actual tax position.

The wealth report and the power that got repealed

The backdrop is IRD’s controversial high-wealth research project. Using powers under the Tax Administration Act, IRD gathered detailed financial data from 311 wealthy families and found in 2023 that they held combined wealth of $86 billion but paid an average effective tax rate of just 9.4%, against 20.2% for middle-wealth New Zealanders. The gap was driven almost entirely by untaxed capital gains.

In 2022, then-Revenue Minister David Parker declared that “the NBR Rich List is a better data set than official statistics”. The findings divided the profession, with debate turning on whether the numbers justified a capital gains tax.

The current government has since moved to repeal the section 17GB power that enabled the project, siding with taxpayer privacy over IRD’s own preference to keep it, even though the department warned repeal “could impact the quality of future policy advice”. But repealing a formal survey power does nothing to the informal practice at issue here, using public information to pick targets remains entirely intact.

Why prominence is now a risk factor

For business owners, this is not a story about sympathy for billionaires. It is about how far tax intelligence should reach, and what triggers it. The uncomfortable takeaway is that public visibility itself has become a data point.

An owner who appears in a magazine profile, on an award shortlist, in a company announcement or in any context implying serious wealth is generating signals a compliance system can read. EY analysis has warned that reported wealth estimates can diverge from actual taxable income, creating exposure even where nothing is wrong. Being visible and being audited are no longer unrelated.

IRD says its tools have improved, and there is no reason to doubt it. The Rich List was a starting point, a crude first filter for a system that now has far more sophisticated ways of noticing you. The list may fade from IRD’s workflow. The instinct behind using it will not.

Sources

• Media Insider: NBR raises questions over IRD’s use of annual Rich List (2026-07-23)
• IRD targets those on Rich List
• Blindfolding the IRD? Government to axe info-gathering power used to shed light on tax paid by the rich
• Tech drives Rich List growth with Aotearoa’s wealthiest worth total of $129 billion
• Richlister questions legitimacy of report on tax bills of wealthy
• How tax transparency affects privacy for high-net-worth individuals