New Zealand Payroll

You can find guidance here: https://www.employment.govt.nz/leave-and-holidays/other-types-of-leave/coronavirus-workplace/leave-and-pay-entitlements-during-covid-19/Look for the table about 1/3rd the way down and the section: Employee is not at the workplace, cannot work from home, and is not sick.Note the * by Leave Without Pay.* If the employer is receiving a subsidy from the Wage Subsidy Scheme or the COVID-19 Leave Support Scheme, all…

Changes to Employment Agreements must be the result of a good faith negotiation. Changes then need to be reflected in the configuration of your payroll. They will affect how leave is calculated and paid. There is some guidance here: https://www.employment.govt.nz/leave-and-holidays/other-types-of-leave/coronavirus-workplace/changing-an-employees-work-arrangements/ While employees were not working, we recommended using Leave Without Pay as short-term method for having…

This is available for for employers, to pay their employees who can’t work because: You can’t received COVID-19 Wage Subsidy and COVID-19 Leave Support for the same employee at the same time. However if you have employees who are on the Wage Subsidy who can’t work when you have work available, you can use the…

Unfortunately one of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will be that many businesses will be terminating the employment relationship with some of their staff. Terminating staff is emotionally, financially and technically difficult for everyone involved, so it is important to have a good process to minimise the hurt and risk to your business. Here…

The minimum wage increased on 1 April 2020 to $18.90 per hour. While there had been pressure on the Government to delay the increase, that didn’t happen. We have automatically increased employee rates to the minimum, but you do need to provide us with any other increases. e.g. if someone was $1 higher than minimum…

Some of you will have seen the announcement at: https://media.ird.govt.nz/articles/inland-revenue-updated-advice-to-businesses/ This announcement indicated that there would be no penalties for late payments. While is seemed the IRD had lost their mind, it was actually only their marketing department that had lost their mind. Here is the latest: https://www.ird.govt.nz/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/tax-relief/uomi The short story is that there is no free…

The IRD are in the process of replacing their mainframe system and improving their business processes. This year’s outage is scheduled for 1500 Thursday 9 April 2020 through morning of 16 April 2020. Online and phone services are unavailable through this time. The main payroll related benefits you will see are: You can read more…

We are not having enough fun with COVID-19, so Easter falls in the middle of Alert Level 4 and we hope ANZAC day will be shortly after.  Stat Days worked are treated as normal, i.e. hours worked are paid at time and 1/2 and if the day worked was a normal working day for the…

I have had some questions from my customers about the accounting treatment of the COVID-19 Wages Subsidy (and for that matter any further subsidies). Many of you know that I consider myself an accounting cripple, so I asked my accountant, Sarah of Dcipher Accounts to provide some advice that I could pass on to you.…

I know that all business owners and managers are under a huge amount of stress at present. This e-mail is to help you understand some of the Employment Law issues you will be facing. Here is the highlight You can’t vary your employee’s hours or rate of pay unilaterally. You need to negotiate in good…

Updates 1500 28 March in red Updates 1700 28 March in purple Updates 1800 11 April in blue The NZ Government have been providing updated guidance for the COVID-19 Wage Subsidy To try and reduce confusion, I have updated this document with the latest we have. This includes possible audit strategies. “The purpose of the…

Many of you will have heard me describe working with the Holidays Act being like riding a bicycle downhill, backwards, and everything being on fire. The Holidays Act is no longer fit for purpose and our current situation highlights this. So now you have more decisions, your choices depend on how you are paying your…