Hi Carol.

The free advice is to ask here . The limit is that you won't want to put personal stuff in a public forum, and we won't answer specific detailed questions without a full understanding of your position anyway. As a chartered accountant I have to be careful with my advice. If I get it wrong, there's always a risk of being sued - or at least having to put things right. So I hope you understand these limitations.

IRD of course offers advice - and if you register a business with them you will probably be asked what help you need. However IRD will of course only present their perspective - and often it's only one officers perspective. While they're "here to help", their views are sometimes limited.

I have to say (putting on my chartered accountant's hat) that there's a lot of detail in this area, and if we expand from tax to business in general, there's an overwhelming amount. of info to deal with. That's why small business is often seen as so hard. Michael Gerber wote a book called "The E Myth Revisited". In it he points out that every business needs three skill sets - entrepreneur, technician and manager. In one-person businesses a technician may develop either of the other two skills - but the other two require opposite personalities. So you really need a team.

Of course most people only have themselves - especially in the early stages. They generally struggle on their own. With luck they may have family or friends who can offer missing skills. Also many buy-in some skills. For example, they often use a marketing specialist. The most commonly used external advisor is the chartered accountant. This is not saying they have all the skills - simply that if you don't have those skills on your team, you'll risk major problems. So not surprisingly I recommend you have a CA on your team. I know it will cost - but not as much as not having one might cost. OK - CA hat off now.

I assume you are a sole trader - companies are a bit different. I don't know whether you're GSt-registered or not. I assume you don't have staff. As you can see each assumption is important - that's why we have to be careful.

Bit if we only worry about tax, your year ends 31/3. You work out your tax and pay it by Feb 7 - or April if you use a tax agent and meet their extension of time.

Sounds simple eh? But there are a couple of complications. In the first year you can actually get a small discount by paying some before year end. Which brings us to provisional tax. People pay PAYE on wages. Business owners don't. But they do pay provisional tax.

This is based on last year's results, adjusted and divided by three. Then at year end if you've had no major difference you'll owe say $9,000, and have paid $9,000 in prov tax - so won't owe anything. Of course it's never that smooth - there's always adjustments to pay of get back.

I'll leave it there for now - the only other thing to mention is ACC. IRD pass the info to ACC and they bill you for ACC. And like tax, you get billed for this year based on last year's results. So you have a catchup when your final results are known.

Isn't tax fun?

Phil Astley - www.businessacademy.co.nz

Sadly there's so few factors stated (e.g. what is your other income) that it's difficult to know what to do. However, there's two things that come to mind.

The first is (as you probably know) there are no more LAQC's from now on. I assume you're thinking through what to do next. Many of us are leaving the company as a QC - but that will also be subject to review by the Government at some stage - they are reviewing other areas which will include this. But you could also transform the company into an LTC - but it should be done within six months. As it's new, many things are still uncertain - but the potential downsides are significant, so be careful.

The second thing is that as a general rule, there's no expectation that a company in a loss situation will allocate shareholder salaries. Now you'll notice that I say that's a general rule. And there are other factors that may make this desireable in some situations. But from the very little information provided, yours probably isn't one of them.

As for not being subject to PAYE, my general advice is "Don't". I assume you're familiar with provisional tax - that's generally a better approach. Of course there are other issues - such as KiwiSaver. But paying salaries with PAYE can be counter-productive. Some time ago I tried to get IRD to look into this area properly after they pointed out the current legal situation is actually the reverse of what I and many of my colleagues had incorrectly understood. So as it stands the law on this is an ass, and I generally recommend people avoid PAYE if they also want to pay any additional profit as bonus salary at year-end.

So hopefully this has helped you a little. I'm biased (being a CA) but I recommend that it's a really good idea to have a CA on your team. What you asked here is one small question, which in turn has raised other questions. Having a CA to turn to when you are making decisions can be very helpful - and can avoid making decisions in blissful ignorance of the law. You may be lucky - but as ignorance is no defence, you might also find it expensive.

Best wishes

This question has so many aspects to it - and many variations on specific issues - so the first thing I'd say is to look at IRD's website. They know people won't get everything 100% right - so talk to advisors and IRD about this - and record the fact. In my opinion IRD is more likely to let minor errors slide if you've made the effort to get it right. Of course the fact is that this is so big there's a good chance IRD won't even find a fraction of the lesser errors.

The other point to note about the IRD website is you may not find the exact answer to your precise question. If in doubt, check with your own advisor - and hope they have adequate standards so their answers are reliable.

The first aspect that comes is the GST basis and periods. If you're on an invoice basis then there are relatively few hassles. If you are on a payments basis, you will see the adjustment required for the September return. After this you will have effectively billed / been billed GST at the new rate on all debtors / creditors - so after that one-off adjustment you treat all transactions as being at the new rate.

There is a transition period - I think from memory of 10 - 11 days - to get September transactions invoiced at the old rate - but try and have as much as possible done as early as possible..

There are many other issues - e.g. laybys - but the main issue is how you're going to handle the changes - especially if you use a commercial package. It's impossible to cover so many alternatives - hopefully your provider is in touch - or it's obvious how it will handle the exercise. If you're not sure then don't wait until October to start looking into it. If the worst happened and you had to buy a new package, you really want it installed and the bugs ironed out before October.

So there in a nutshell is my take on the coming change. There's a lot of details unique to each situation - so don't leave it. Act now and reduce the load in October.

I'm assuming you're meaning accounts in a general ledger sense - not as in bank accounts with IRD etc. I'm also assuming "tax" means income tax - there are all sorts of taxes collected by the IRD - so I just have to clarify that.

Unfortunately there's no golden rule. Really it probably depends on what program you're using - and how you're accountant (assuming you use a CA) will treat it. So I'll suggest a fairly full way of doing it - but often it is done simpler, and left the the accountant to check it. This would
include, for example, making sure the payment coded to tax doesn't have any interest or penalties in it.

First off, there are two main types of tax payments - provisional and terminal. The provisional might be say 10,000 per instalment, giving 30,000 total. Each if these could be coded to a code just for provisional tax.

Terminal is the difference between provisional and total. Now this is where things get a bit tricky. Unless the total is less than 2,500, then companies pay or receive UOMI (interest) of the shortfall / surplus, based on each instalment of provisional tax, and when the final tax is paid / refunded. So the tax part of any payment might go to terminal tax.

Thus you might have a group of accounts called tax, with sub-accounts called provisional and terminal. At year end, when you have worked out your company tax, that goes into the P&L for the year as an expense, and the other side goes into the B/S as a liability for Tax. (Provision for tax - different from provisional tax - confusing eh?)

You should have paid provisional tax - and the difference should be terminal tax. Of course that's only for tax - interest goes straight to the expense (or income) account as appropriate. It's made a bit more complex these days because the third provisional tax payment probably
won't have been paid until after year end - so things are just a bit trickier to reconcile. And of course this also causes chaos in the ICA (Imputation Credit Account) but that's a whole other story.

I don't know if this has fully answered your question - tax is a big area with lots of permutations, etc. That's why the IRD is so big. I've tried to cover the main points which should at least get you someway there.

Best wishes
Phil Astley (and posted by the Bizbuzz Team)