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What you need to know: Inland Revenue shutdown period in NZ

Xero

Mar 10, 2020

As you may have heard, Inland Revenue will be offline from 3pm on Thursday 9th April until 8am Thursday 16th April – a period that covers Easter holiday weekend and the two working days after that. This includes all online MyIR portals, offices, and call centres, while they switch over to new systems as part of their Business Transformation project.

What does this mean for you? If you are GST registered, pay employees, or are an accountant or bookkeeper, you will not be able to access any IR services during this time. We’ve outlined the impact on you as a Xero user below:

GST

If you are GST registered and use Xero, you’ll be preparing and eFiling your GST returns through Xero. Xero will still be online throughout this period, so you can still prepare and finalise your GST returns as you normally would. The final step of eFiling your GST return with IR will not be possible during the offline period, so you’ll need to complete this step once systems are back online on the 16th April. Any GST returns for the period ending 31 March will be due for filing with IR by the 7th May. So make sure you file your returns by this date to avoid late fees and interest.

Payroll

If you use Xero Payroll, you can continue to post your pay runs and pay your employees during this period. With payday filing, we will automatically queue your payday filing details – so you can rest assured that these will be processed for you once IR is back online. With payday filing, details usually need to be submitted to IR within 2 days of the pay run so this will be extended to the 19th April for any pay runs posted during the offline period.

Tax

Accountants and bookkeepers who use Xero Tax will also be affected by the offline period. You can continue to prepare and file income tax returns and GST returns during this period. The eFiling of these returns will be queued and submitted once the systems are back online on the 16th April.

Any AIM provisional tax returns not able to be eFiled during the offline period will need to be posted once systems are back online.

Transaction feeds will also be suspended during the offline period but should resume on the 16th April meaning all data should be up to date by the morning of the 17th April.

Due to Student Loan transactions being migrated to START during the shutdown period, we  cannot guarantee the integrity of our 7 May Student Loan interim payment reminders as all Student Loan calculations will need to be recalculated using START data.

We strongly recommend that all 7 May Student Loan interim payment reminders are finalised and sent before Thursday 9th April to ensure minimal disruption.

For more information, head over to Inland Revenue’s website.

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