j19fmm

After hanging on the 7-11 quoted minutes I spoke to a very helpful lady. Turns out the bank has been charging me tax at too low a rate on my savings account. How was I meant to know that?
Said lovely lady has done something to my online account so that I can now complete my IR3 online tomorrow. Fingers crossed the tax bill isn't too huge

Persephone

Online is so much easier! Hopefully you'll be due a refund that will cancel out any tax owed

j19fmm

I should be able to do it online now...if I could find the damn online form to complete!!! Trying to sort this between parent interviews at school is not good. Feeling very frustrated...

LauraNotts

I got an annoying message back from mytax.co.nz saying that the colour photocopy of my ID (my passport) that I had faxed through was not good enough. Personally I blame thier fax machine. The long and short of it is I have now posted the dratted thing. Stress free, my foot. Should have gone through IRD. Learned my lesson for next year.

j19fmm

So, had to ring them again. Apparently they are only updating the myIRD on a Tuesday and a Thursday...that means you get to access it a day later. So I'll try again tomorrow! Seems the Bank savings have been taxed at non-resident rate and should be on highest rate of 33%

LauraNotts

$1400...not bad I guess. Though because it's via IR3 I won't get it back for up to 10 weeks. Not so good. Well, better than a kick in the teeth

j19fmm

WOW! not bad? I'd be super happy with that!

LauraNotts

Haha yeah I was a little grumpy when I found out I might be waiting up to 10 weeks and that I had to pay an extra $99 fee for their 14 minutes of work. But I really have no right to be because I knew that they charged fees and chose to use a company. I have cheered up now and planned my shopping list. Fingers crossed it comes within the 10-14 days quoted as 'typical' cause that'll be right in time for my holiday.

Hebe

Thanks for this. Told my OH. He was reluctant to do it saying as he's PAYE he won't get anything. I pushed, he did it - $4160.00 refund.

If you have arrived mid year try it, you might be surprised

Persephone

Think you deserve a decent chunk of that to spend on yourself since you knew better

Thing to note is that PAYE doesn't take into account how much of the year you've worked, it assumes you're working a full year. It's why you pay the same amount of tax at every pay rather than it increasing as the year goes on when you change into a higher tax bracket.

That's why you are often due a refund if you arrive or leave midway through a year as you have in essence overpaid tax at first. If you stop working for part of the year or change jobs onto a different salary you may also be due one.

MrsFychan

think MrF got around that the first year he was here.
together this year we only got just over $600 but it should be in our account next Tuesday which happens to be our wedding anniversary so I think I nice slap up meal is in order

MrsFychan

just checked my account and the money is already in there

GoingIn2011

With tax rebate companies, you still have to wait 10 weeks. So you would not get it any quicker...

GoingIn2011

An uninteresting footnote to this - MyTax were having a laugh. I have hired a new accountant as I have a freelance position now. The accountant worked out my tax rebate and as it happens I owe 57 dollars for 2011-2012 and am not entitled to a 4k tax rebate. I have to say I did find the Mytax rebate quite unfathomable given my back of the envelope calculations. And I was right - it was all a mirage. You would think - given that this is their core business - that they would know how to calculate tax. My accountant reckons that they had assumed that my work had pro-ratad the various tax bands and done the calculation off that rather than just taking my total earnings for the year and performing a simple calculation based on that. What a bunch of jokers!

Persephone

Shocking that they got it so wrong. I would assume they'd have looked at the actual figures as well. After all, it's worked out on how much you earn and how much tax you've paid-why assume anything else?

Good luck with the new position