NZ payroll year-end: What employers need to know

The end of the tax year can get hectic with all the changes happening. But Payroll in Xero makes your year-end tasks painless and simple. We provide the tools and education to make your compliance and updates a breeze, leaving you with more time to focus on doing the things you want to do.

Upcoming changes you need to be aware of:

• The minimum wage is increasing by $1.20 to $18.90 on 1 April 2020. The starting-out and training minimum wage rates will increase from $14.16 to $15.12 per hour. If these changes affect your employees, update their wages and salary details.
• The annual ACC earner levy threshold is going up to $130,911 and the Student Loan threshold is increasing to $385 a week.Xero takes care of both of these updates automatically for you. 
• Domestic Violence Leave is now referred to as Family Violence Leave.

What you need to do:

• Update the salary and wages information for employees on minimum wage (if necessary).
• Review your employees’ ESCT rates to ensure they reflect what the employee actually earned for the previous tax year. Make sure this is done between your last pay run paid in March and your first pay run with a payment date in April. You can review the ESCT rates from an employee’s Taxes tab.
• Rename the Domestic Violence Leave pay item to Family Violence Leave by editing the pay item.

For more information on preparing for the new financial year, check out the Xero Central page. If you can’t find the information you need, you can get in touch with our support team here.

Please be aware Inland Revenue will be offline from 3pm on Thursday 9th April until 8am Thursday 16th April. The period covers Easter holiday weekend and the two working days after that. This includes all online MyIR portals, offices, and call centres while they switch over to new systems as part of their Business Transformation project. To find out what this means for you as a Xero Payroll user, read What you need to know: Inland Revenue shutdown period in NZ.