IR Updates 2018

Details
Last Updated: Tuesday, 12 March 2019 00:33

Changes from April 2018

A.C.C

Now referred to as the ACC Earners' Levy.

The maximum income threshold increases to $126,286.00 resulting in a maximum levy of $1755.37 p.a. The levy rate remains at 1.39%.

Scheduler Payments

Scheduler payments (Contractor withholding tax) are able to specify their own rate with a minimum of 10%

Student Loans

The loan repayment threshold for employees on the M SL code increases to $374.00 per week or $19,448.00 p.a.

Independent Earner Tax Credit Continues

Removal of IETC (Ending of the ME tax code) as legislated by the National Government in the 2017 Budget has now been repealed.

ir-File replaced with myIR

This is discontinued from 1st April 18 and electronic filing of EMS, EDF and KiwiSaver is now through myIR.

Late update ir-file has been re-instated and appears as an option in myIR and works as previously.

Electronic Amendment Schedules

EAS or IR344 to amend an EMS return can now be done through myIR.

Late update It appears this is now only available to payroll intermediaries.

Pay-Day Filing in 2019

This requires employers to file employee income and deductions (EI) for each pay. A New and Deleted employees (NDE) return is required for these events. Pay-day filing is voluntary from 1st April 2018 until 1st April 2019 when it becomes compulsory. Payrolls need to be modified to support this system and using it in 2018 is regarded as a testing and debugging period. The IR payroll specifications have been changed as recently as 10th Dec 2018.

These changes are far reaching and for many may require re-assessment of their whole processing procedure. IR are running seminars and we recommend registering to attend one. Users can query IR about their own situations as we believe they are not fully aware of how varied some businesses are in currently filing. e.g through their accountant.

The will still be four options available to file after each pay:

  1. Directly via B2B from within payroll. (Not yet supported by KeyPay.)
  2. Load a file produced by payroll each pay. (Via myIR similar to current monthly)
  3. Enter the pay details for each employee manually into myIR.
  4. File by paper return. (PAYE+ESTC below $50,000 - only from 1/4/19)

The IR345 (EDF) may no longer be required each month, just the payment as IR now have the breakdowns via the EI returns and presumably myIR will show the payment amount required.