Upcoming changes to NZ payroll – what you need to know

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The end of financial year can get hectic with all the changes happening. But Payroll in Xero makes the 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 $17.70 on 1 April 2019. The starting-out and training minimum wage rates will increase from $13.20 to $14.16 per hour. To see how to update this in your organisation, please take a look at Xero Central.
The annual ACC earner levy threshold is going up to $128,470, and the Student Loan threshold is increasing to $380 a week – Xero takes care of both of these updates automatically for you.
KiwiSaver maximum deduction is increasing from 8% to 10%.
Payday Filing will be compulsory from 1 April 2019, more information can be found here.
Introduction of Domestic Violence Leave, 10 days after 6 months of employment. This will be automatically added to your Leave Pay Items and can be manually assigned to the employees. You can see how to assign this to your employees here.

What you need to do:

Update the salary and wages information for those employees on minimum wage (if necessary)
Before the first pay run of the new tax year, review your employees’ ESCT rates, to make sure they are based on what the employee actually earned for the previous tax year. This is done from an employee’s Taxes tab.
Connect to myIR from within Xero to ensure pay runs with payment dates from 1 April 2019 get automatically filed once the pay run is posted.

For more information on end-of-year payroll information, check out the Xero Central Page. If you can’t find the information you need, the support team are here to help – find out the best way to contact us.

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