From 1 October 2016 non-resident businesses must charge and return GST where they meet the criteria to register for GST and they supply remote services (including online services) to New Zealand residents. As a New Zealand resident business, you won’t be charged GST on these supplies, if:

• you are GST-registered
• the supplies are part of your taxable activity, and
• you let the non-resident supplier know you’re GST registered and provide your New Zealand GST registration number or business number

(more…)

Uber as a modern day business, is rapidly growing and becoming more recognisable. Fisher Funds take on Uber, shows some of the disruptions facing businesses today. Click here to read more.

Trustees are personally liable for the tax obligations of the trust. If a trustee resigns as trustee of a trust they must let the IRD know in writing, as soon as possible following the resignation, so that their records can be updated. If a trustee resigns and doesn’t let inform the IRD, they will still be recognised as a trustee which makes them liable for any tax obligations of the trust. They will remain recognised as a trustee until the IRD receive written confirmation. (more…)

We have been notified of a planned outage this weekend for all Xero Payroll users. This will take place for a few hours from 6am NZT on Sunday 11 September. While Xero is offline, payroll users won’t have access to any Xero accounts or to Xero payroll.

Throughout the downtime, Xero will be updating their status page with an estimate of when Xero will be back online.

The new law for taxing property sales has now come in to effect. The NZ Herald has published a useful decision tree to assist property purchasers: (Source: NZ Herald, 2015)   To read the full article visit http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11515118    

Motor Vehicle Mileage Rates Inland Revenue have announced that from the 2015 income year, the mileage claim has dropped to 74 cents per kilometre for both petrol and diesel fuel vehicles. FBT and Low Interest Rates The rate of interest used to calculate fringe benefit tax on low-interest, employment-related loans is 6.22% effective 1 July 2015. Pooling of Assets The maximum pooling value increases from $2,000 to $5,000, and applies to depreciation calculations made for the 2015-2016 tax year. The increase came into force on 1 July 2015.

The Prime Minister John Key announced proposals today to improve tax compliance in the property investment sector. The proposals, which are not aimed at the main family home, include:

• A New Zealand IRD number will be required as part of the land transfer process.
• As part of the land transfer process, non-resident buyers and sellers must also provide their tax identification number from their home country.
• Non-residents will also need a New Zealand bank account before they can get an IRD number in order to buy a property.
• Gains from residential property sold within two years of purchase will be taxed, unless the property is the seller’s main home, inherited from a deceased estate or transferred as part of a relationship property settlement.
• An extra Budget allocation for Inland Revenue work investigating property compliance, aggressive tax planning and hidden economy initiatives.

Please be aware that a new variant of this nasty virus is running rampant in NZ now. It is arriving via email as an attachment called resume.pdf. If you receive an email including this attachment, do not open and delete at once.

Notification received this week from Inland Revenue. Use-of-money interest rates on underpaid and overpaid tax will rise on 8 May 2015. The interest rate charged by Inland Revenue on underpaid tax will rise from 8.40% to 9.21%, and the rate for overpaid tax will rise from 1.75% to 2.63%. The rates are reviewed regularly to ensure they are aligned to market interest rates and were last updated in May 2012. The new rates were approved by Order in Council on Monday 30 March.

The IRD has advised they have changed their requirements around an agent (that’s us, your accountant) getting your authority to act on your behalf. An authority to act for you as an individual client doesn’t extend to any of your related entities, e.g. a company, partnership or trust. We, as agents, will need a separate authority to act for each IRD number we’re linked to. For non-individuals we must have all signatures for the entity if there’s more than one director, trustee, partner, or person with delegated authority from the other members. In light of this, over the next few months we will be re-issuing our letters of engagement, where applicable, so that we are in compliance with the new IRD requirements. We apologise for any inconvenience, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.