newsletter                                                               29/05/2024

June & July tax deadlines

Remembering the filing and payment deadlines for your business can be challenging. And forgetting about tax payments coming up can seriously disrupt your cash flow planning. We have summarised tax deadlines coming up in June & July for you to prevent you from missing any deadlines and facing a penalty.

Tax Dates for June & July 2024

28 Jun

• Your GST return and payment is due for the 1 or 2 month period ending 31 May.

30 Jun

• Annual cycle for Reporting New Zealand Financial Institutions submitting their common reporting standards information to us for the previous reporting period ended 31 March.

29 Jul

• Your GST return and payment is due for the 1 or 2 month period ending 30 June.

• AIM instalments are due if you file GST monthly and have a March balance date.

Make sure to plan for your tax obligations in your monthly cash flow forecasting. Reach out to your Walker Wayland Accountant if you need to review your forecast and look at options.

Don’t get caught out!

Scammers love to use IRD. Here’s a few pointers to avoid falling into a trap.

Email and text scams

IRD will not put refund amounts, or links to myIR in emails or texts.

Scam emails may have links or come from email addresses that are wrong, but look almost right. For example ird.co.nz, ird.qovt.nz or ird.gov.nz. The correct address is ird.govt.nz

To check a link, use your mouse to hover over it. The address will appear in a box or at the bottom of your screen. Make sure the link is correct before you click on it.

Phone scams

If you get a suspicious call from someone claiming to be from Inland Revenue, ask for their name and number. You can then contact us or IRD through the official website, to confirm the call you received was genuine.

Social media scams

IRD official social media accounts are on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. They also have a YouTube channel. 

Scammers may use fake versions of a social media account to try and contact you. They may pretend to be Inland Revenue staff. To check that a social media account is official:

- Look at the number of followers. Fake social media accounts often show only a few followers. IRD’s official Facebook account has over 84,000 followers, and their LinkedIn has over 45,000 followers.

- Check the activity on the accounts. For example the number of posts made and how often they are made.

- See when the account was created. IRD’s Facebook account was created in 2013.

They will never ask for personal or financial information through social media posts or use any type of direct messaging.

IRD will also not use terms like:

dear citizen

fiscal activity

excess payment

our department or Department of Taxes

NZ Govt Tax Refund

IRD Customer Portal or IRD Revenue portal. 

Stolen IRD number

Although uncommon, fraudsters could sometimes use your IRD number to claim tax refunds or tax credits. Some signs that someone else might be using your IRD number are:

- The bank account or address in myIR Secure Online Services is not yours.

- You have received a notice of assessment from us for a return you did not file.

- A return you have not filed is showing as filed.

Please contact us if you think these may have happened to you.

Final note: If something seems too good to be true, it is probably a scam!

Business records, including any information or document about sales, income, expenses, assets and liabilities, must be kept for a period of 7 years. However long gone are the days of keeping your records in a shoe box or in archive boxes. Now storing your data electronically is the norm.

Xero has several features to assist you in the electronic storage of your data. Two of these are the use of "Files" - included  in all Xero packages and "Hubdoc" included in Xero Starter, Standard and Premium Plans.

Files

Use the Xero email located at the top right of "Files" to email invoices/documents received directly into Xero or upload files manually. They can then be attached to transactions so that every expense has its invoice attached. Other helpful uses for "files" is to create an annual folder to store the financial data you usually provide us at year end to assist us in preparing your accounts. “Files” can also be found under “Contacts” along with “financial records” where you can store data for clients and supplies including contracts, bank statements etc. By having your source records saved in xero we can quickly find what we need to help us prepare your accounts and provide financial advice.

Hubdoc

Hubdoc is a huge time saver for you and your staff as it creates your “Bills to pay” invoices for you by reading your financial documents and reducing data entry. You email/upload your supplier invoices to Xero. Hubdoc does the data entry by reading key information from bills and receipts and turning it into usable data. Supplier names, amounts, invoice numbers and due dates are extracted for you to create transactions in Xero with the source document attached. Although Hubdoc is free to use in Xero Starter, Standard and Premium Plans you need to activate it. To do this go to “settings”, click on “Connected Apps”, search for Hubdoc and click on app icon, Then click on “get this app” and follow the screen prompts. We can guide you through setting up Hubdoc.

If you would like us to review and provide recommendations to improve to your current file storage system to ensure that you are capturing the records you need to keep for 7 years then contact your client services manager or partner.

 With Inland Revenue's focus now shifting away from COVID-19 support for businesses and towards debt recovery and compliance, clients who ignore these obligations may force the IRD to take stronger action including debt enforcement and or insolvency proceedings.  

If you have missed a provisional tax payment or are struggling to meet tax obligations, a great alternative to IRD's  high use-of-money interest and late penalties is to use Tax Management New Zealand (TMNZ) - an approved registered tax pooling intermediary who can help you manage provisional or terminal tax due date payments for the current tax year, or one just completed.  They can also help with other types of tax such as PAYE and GST if you have received a notice of reassessment from IRD due to a voluntary disclosure or IRD audit.  Unlike IRD, TMNZ charges a lower interest rate than IRD which can lead to significant savings for you.

TMNZ lets you pay upcoming provisional tax payments in a manner that suits you. There are two options, Flexitax and Tax Finance, that can help you depending on how you want to pay.  

-     Flexitax will suit taxpayers who wish to pay provisional tax in instalments, with no set amounts or payment dates, provided you pay in full before the legal deadline. 

-     Tax Finance lets you defer the full provisional tax payment to a time in the future that better suits your cashflow, you pay a fixed upfront finance fee and choose the date when you would like to pay.

If you think Tax Management New Zealand might be the right idea for you, please contact your Walker Wayland Auckland client services manager or partner to discuss it further.

 This month we ventured out of the office to celebrate the end of another financial year. There was a surprising amount of technique involved and a touch of friendly competition, but ultimately it was a win for the girls, with our new resident shield-maiden Nicole taking out first place with an impressive score.

Special thanks to Sweet Axe for their hospitality.

P O Box 2175 Auckland 1140

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