By law, you must keep accurate and complete records to work out your income and expenses, confirm your accounts and meet GST or employer obligations. However, sometimes records are lost, destroyed or damaged.
Meeting your return filing and payment obligations
If lost, destroyed or damaged records will delay you from making a payment or filing your return, contact us early. We may be able to help.
In some situations, we may be able to give you more time to find or replace records and set a new filing date. We can also explain your options and what to do if you find it hard to pay your tax.
During some specific events, we may offer additional support.
Tax relief for adverse and emergency events
A temporary arrangement may be helpful, but you are responsible for recovering enough records to meet your obligations.
Checking computers and back-ups
Cloud-based accounting software is widely used. This is a reliable way to back up your accounting data and records.
If your records were on a computer or other device which was damaged, they may be recoverable from the hard drive. There are specialists who offer these services.
Ways to retrieve or reconstruct lost or damaged records
Recovering or reconstructing records depends on what information has been destroyed or damaged.
Contacting your tax agent
If you have a tax agent, accountant or agency who helps with your tax affairs, please contact them. They may have copies of your records or be able to help you reconstruct your records.
Checking myIR
Tax information such as returns, account balances, transaction records, earning information and PAYE details are in your myIR account.
Other ways to recover or reconstruct records can include:
- getting copies of bank statements
- contacting your customers and suppliers to ask for copies of invoices, taxable supply information or statements
- asking employees to supply copies of employment agreements
- getting replacement versions from employees for documents such as tax code declarations - IR330 or Kiwisaver enrolment information – KS2 and IR346K
- starting a new vehicle logbook test period.
If copies or replacements of records are not available
You must take every step you can to retrieve or recover records, or find other supporting documentation to meet your tax obligations.
If copies or replacement versions or other supporting information are not available, please record the details as best you can. For example, for a transaction, record:
- dates
- names and contact details
- a description of the goods or services
- amounts paid or payable.
Letting us know in myIR
You can give us this information in myIR as a web message or in writing. You must explain why you cannot get replacement supporting information and what you did to retrieve the records. Give us alternative information if you can.
We will treat each notification on a case-by-case basis.
Some industries have standard costs calculators and other tools that may help you work out a reasonable estimation of your costs. However, this should be a last resort and considered only in rare cases.