IR has a relationship with nearly every individual and business in New Zealand and hundreds of thousands of customers living overseas. We focus on making tax and student loan obligations simple to pay, supporting individuals and families through making social policy payments and helping New Zealanders save for their first home or retirement.
It’s important to our individual customers that we:
- send out annual tax assessments quickly and explain things clearly
- help people pay what they should on time
- make it straightforward to set up a plan for repaying an overdue debt.
3.5 million customers
- received an automatically issued individual income tax assessment in the tax year to March 20231.
3.4 million KiwiSaver members
- were enrolled in the scheme at 30 June 2024. We transferred $10.4 billion to scheme providers to invest in 2023–24.
618,000 student loan borrowers
- made $1.6 billion in repayments this year.
$328 million in donation tax credits
- went to 313,000 customers in 2023–24.
Families receive social policy payments that we deliver along with MSD and MBIE.
Some families may be facing hardship, managing complex circumstances or unsure about the payments they’re entitled to.
Families and whānau want us to:
- give them certainty about the payments they receive from week to week
- take the time to understand their situations and work through options for receiving entitlements or paying child support.
Along with MSD, IR distributed:
- $3.1 billion in net entitlements to support working families this year.
- 145,000 children were supported by the Child Support Scheme.
- $480 million in child support was collected from more than 127,000 parents in 2023–24 and $413 million was distributed to carers.
- $642 million in paid parental leave payments went to around 54,000 new parents.
All New Zealand businesses interact with IR. As well as paying tax, businesses play a key role in the tax and social policy system by providing us with employment information and collecting tax and social policy payments such as student loans and child support for their staff.
Small businesses want dealing with IR to be as simple and efficient as possible. We’re focused on reducing their compliance effort.
Providing certainty and clarity for companies is critical so they can manage their tax obligations.
It’s important that we:
- help new businesses get their tax right from the start
- reduce the effort and uncertainties involved in paying tax
- understand their circumstances if they’re going through difficulties
- make it easy to advise us about any significant loss of income or set up an instalment arrangement to pay a debt.
250,000 employers
- filed more than 7.2 million employer information returns in 2023–24.
708,000 customers
- were registered for GST at some point in 2023–24. They filed 3.19 million GST returns.
435,000 company returns
- were filed in the 2023 tax year.1
One of the ways that we keep customers at the centre of our services is through our customer research panel, IR Connection.
IR Connection is an 18,000-strong community who represent all customer groups and product users, including traditionally hard-to-reach customers such as new migrants and people living with disabilities.
Through the panel, IR learns about customers’ experiences, motivations and needs. This year, members have shared their views on a range of key topics, including:
- looking at ways to optimise the electronic notifications we send to customers when there is an action they need to take or information to read
- helping our policy teams understand how donation tax credits are working for customers.
We are grateful for IR Connection members’ time and valuable contributions.
1Figures for the tax year ended March 2024 are not available for this Annual Report because some customers who use tax agents have until April 2025 to file their 2024 returns.