Postscript
Claiming legitimate business expenses
With the recent media coverage about the claiming of business expenses, we thought it timely to remind you to always keep in mind what expenses are tax-deductible and what are not.
If you’re self-employed, there is very useful information here at Business NZ: https://bit.ly/31WdFgS
For those of you who work in a corporate environment, your organisation will no doubt have an expenses policy to ensure all claims are legitimate.
It is worth remembering that you should keep all receipts so you can easily validate your claims.
Companies Office helping amalgamation customers ‘get it right first time’
The Companies Office is reminding its customers who are amalgamating or closing down companies to ‘get it right first time’ when filing documents.
To help applicants tick all the boxes, the Companies Office now provides additional online resources, including a comprehensive pre-submission checklist. These resources can be found here: https://bit.ly/2WRoRaR
Tax Working Group – capital gains tax scrubbed
It is said that timing cannot always be perfect. We published Fineprint’s Autumn edition in early April with a commentary on the Tax Working Group’s proposal to introduce a capital gains tax.
However, just before Easter and only 10 days or so after we published Fineprint, the government announced that the proposed capital gains tax would not proceed. The Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, stated that the government was unable to find a consensus and there was no mandate for such a tax. She has ruled out the introduction of a capital gains tax under her leadership.
The government still believes there is much unfairness in New Zealand’s tax system. The Prime Minister said, “Work will continue to cut red tape for business and crack down on multi-nationals avoiding paying their fair share of tax in New Zealand.” On 4 June the government released a discussion document on options for introducing a digital services tax.
We will keep you up to date with any developments from the Tax Working Group.