Legal representatives may be authorised to act on behalf of clients in tax matters, provided we receive formal confirmation of their appointment.
When you nominate a solicitor, you’ll need to make it clear who’s authorised to act—the individual solicitor or their law firm in general.
There are 3 ways to confirm this appointment.
Appointment as a nominated person
This is the preferred option.
Information required when someone has died
When sending us confirmation of the appointment, you need to include supporting documentation such as a letter of administration, will, or probate. This helps us confirm the executor or administrator has the authority to act on behalf of the estate.
Letter of engagement
Your solicitor can let us know they’re authorised to act for you by giving us a letter of engagement, or other written confirmation, which must include:
- Your full name and IRD number (individual or non-individual).
- Signature(s) and date(s) of the authorised signatory/signatories.
- Where it’s a non-individual entity (like a company or partnership), the name, and the position of each signatory in the non-individual entity.
- A statement to the effect of: ‘We are authorised to act on behalf of the above client in all tax-related matters/assistance with distributing their estate’.
The letter of engagement or written confirmation can be added as an attachment to a message on myIR, uploaded to myTrove, or sent as mail to:
Inland Revenue
PO Box 39010
Wellington Mail Centre
Lower Hutt 5045
Appointment as an ‘Other representative’
You can give your solicitor access to your tax accounts as an ‘Other representative’.
Note this option does not allow them to be linked to Child Support or KiwiSaver. If you require the solicitor to have access to these accounts then we can add them as a nominated person.
More information
Solicitors can see information on what we require when someone has died in the New Zealand Law Society’s The Property Lawyer bulletin published 10 April 2025 and The Family Advocate bulletin published on the 2 April 2025.
Our OS 25/03 publication has more information about giving someone authority to act.