A Week in Review

Adverse event assistance

For those of you with farming, growers or orchardist clients in the South Island who may have been financially affected by December’s hail storms, IR has released a reminder regarding the Income Equalisation Scheme (IES) discretions.

The IES regime provides an opportunity for those affected by an adverse weather event, to self-assess the impact of the adverse event, and then make application to use the IES discretions, which can provide for the early release of refunds.

IR advises that they will look favourably on such self-assessment applications although naturally, they may still seek to clarify aspects of an individual applicants circumstances.

Income tax return acknowledgement 

Based on taxpayer feedback, IR will now be issuing a Return acknowledgement notice, in circumstances where the tax return filed has been accepted without changes being made by IR. The new acknowledgement will in essence be confirmation of receipt of the tax return (without change) and will be sent to tax agents where a redirect is in place, and/or will be available in myIR in the ‘all client mail report’.

A notice of assessment as opposed to a return acknowledgement will continue to be issued for those tax returns filed, where IR does amended the filed figures.