Depending on the nature of your business, you may have workers who are employees or contractors, or you may have both. Each has their merits, but it’s important to review which are which in order to meet your tax obligations. When you have an employee, you must withhold income tax as well as report on additional benefits. Contractors generally look after their own tax obligations but in some cases employers… Read more
Want a better way to collect and manage recurring payments from customers? GoCardless is a payment processing app that allows users to set up and manage recurring payments online. The app is designed to simplify the process of collecting payments, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. If you have repeating invoices, then GoCardless is the system for you! Although there are a few ways to manage payments, a simple direct… Read more
This content was originally created by Smartly Payroll. The end of financial year (EOFY) is an important time to be on top of all things payroll, and we know it can be a stressful time for Kiwi business owners. To help you feel confident with the upcoming changes and requirements, Smartly have pulled together everything you need to know including: An overview of changes to legislation Processing your final pay… Read more
If you own a rental property, it is important to understand what expenses are deductible to help lower your tax burden. Deductible expenses Generally, for an expense to be deductible, it needs to be incurred in generating the rental income while the property is either rented out or has been made available for rent. These expenses include ongoing and holding costs: Rates Insurance Cleaning Accounting fees Property management fees Travel… Read more
Northern New Zealand has seen an absolute deluge recently which has caused terrible damage to roads, houses and even caused deaths. While people begin the clean up, those who use their property to earn a rental income might be wondering, “are the repairs to my flood damaged property tax deductible?” As is often the case with tax law, the answer is “it depends”. Generally, if you replace an item like… Read more
There appears to be increased activity by Inland Revenue around Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) compliance. They have updated the information on their website and recently sent “are you filing your FBT correctly?” emails to entities registered for FBT. This could be a sign that the IRD are looking closely at FBT at the moment so it is important that you get it right to save yourself in the event of… Read more
A change to the rules around how GST applies to services in the platform economy, such as Airbnb and Uber, will likely come into effect on 1 April 2024 as part of the Taxation Annual Rates for 2022-23 Platform Economy and Remedial Matters) Bill (No 2). The proposal The Bill proposes that GST is to be levied on all platform economy supplies. For the individual suppliers who are not registered… Read more
The rules covering tax invoices are being updated for the first time since the introduction of GST in 1986 with the aim being to make GST record keeping easier. GST invoice rules are being updated to reflect some of the changes that have occurred in the way business is done and to make the format of a tax invoice, now called taxable supply information, less prescriptive. These changes are set to… Read more
Still paying bills as they get sent to you without any formal process? We recommend introducing a batch payment system where bills from suppliers are entered into Xero through Hubdoc and then a batch payment file is uploaded to your online banking system once or twice a month (usually on the 7th and the 20th.) One issue with using this system is that you need to separate out bills that… Read more