The accounting income method (AIM) is available to individuals and companies with a yearly turnover under $5 million.
Using AIM will suit your business if:
- your business is growing
- you're new to business
- your income has reduced significantly since last year and is hard to estimate
- you have irregular or seasonal income
- it's hard to forecast your income accurately
- you have accounting software or want to start using accounting software.
You'll only pay provisional tax when your business makes a profit. If you make your payments in full and on time, we will not charge use of money interest.
You can sign up to use AIM any time during the year.
How AIM compares to the other provisional tax options
Refunds of overpaid provisional tax
Your statement of activity will let us know if you've overpaid your provisional tax for the year.
If your business makes a loss you can get a refund straightaway and you will not need to:
- file an Annual imputation return - IR4J
- wait until the end of the year to get the refund.
What happens if a statement of activity is not filed
If you miss 2 statements of activity, we'll contact you to make sure there was not a misunderstanding or system error.
If you continue to miss filing your statement of activity you may be moved from AIM to the estimation option. We may also charge use of money interest.
You need to choose to use AIM each year
AIM customers will be automatically switched to the standard provisional tax method at the beginning of each tax year.
If you want to continue using AIM for the new tax year, you can keep doing so. We'll automatically update your account to show you're using AIM when you file your first Statement of activity for the year.