Extra checks for the Cost of Living Payment

We’ll be carrying out extra checks to see if your clients are eligible for the Cost of Living Payment.

People have to be present in New Zealand to be eligible for the payment.

For payments made in August, we considered your clients to be in New Zealand if our records showed their main physical address was in New Zealand.

From September we'll be doing some extra checks.

Extra checks to confirm your client is in New Zealand

Here are some examples of what we use to confirm your client is in New Zealand.

• They received salary or wages in the last 2 months from a New Zealand employer.
• They're registered as the principal child carer or partner for Working for Families Tax Credits.

Extra checks to confirm your client is overseas

Here are some examples of the extra checks we use to work out if your client is overseas.

• They filed a non-resident tax return, or part-year tax return, selecting 'departing New Zealand'.
• They're an overseas-based student loan customer or have applied to be treated as physically present in New Zealand.

If your client is in New Zealand

Clients who think they should have received a payment but did not, can check by logging in to myIR and selecting ‘I want to…’ and then ‘Cost of Living Payment eligibility’.

If we've considered a client to be outside New Zealand but they were not, they can send us a message in myIR or call us on 0800 473 777.