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Social Security Act 2018

Administration - Reciprocity agreements with other countries - Debt recovery and information exchange

384: MSD may use mutual assistance provisions to recover debts

You could also call this:

“MSD can collect money owed to other countries' social security systems”

When the government makes an agreement with another country to help each other collect money owed for social security, they can use special rules to do this. If someone owes money to the other country’s social security system, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) in New Zealand can collect that money as if it was owed to New Zealand.

To prove that someone owes money, the other country can send a signed paper saying how much is owed. This paper is usually enough to show that the debt is real, unless someone can prove it’s not true.

When MSD collects money for the other country, they have to treat it carefully. They can’t just spend it like normal government money. Instead, they have to follow special rules about trust money set out in a law called the Public Finance Act 1989.

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383: Inclusion of mutual assistance provisions in reciprocity agreements, or

“Countries can agree to help each other with social security”

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385: MSD may use mutual assistance provisions to exchange information, or

“MSD can share information with other countries to help with social security”

Part 6 Administration
Reciprocity agreements with other countries: Debt recovery and information exchange

384MSD may use mutual assistance provisions to recover debts

  1. This section applies if an order is made under section 380 in respect of a reciprocity agreement that contains a provision for the Governments of New Zealand and the other country to provide each other with assistance in the recovery of social security debts.

  2. A social security debt of the other country may, under and subject to the provision and to the extent that the debt has not been recovered in the other country, be recovered by MSD under regulations made under section 444 as if it were a debt due to the Crown.

  3. A certificate signed by an authorised officer of the competent institution of the other country and to the effect that the debt is of a kind that New Zealand may under the agreement provide assistance to recover is, in the absence of proof to the contrary, sufficient evidence for the purposes of subsection (2) of the existence of the debt.

  4. Any amount recovered under subsection (2) is trust money for the purposes of the Public Finance Act 1989.

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