April 2018 NZ Payroll & Tax Changes

On 1 April 2018 a few payroll changes come into effect that you should know about. If you’re a FlexiTime user, it’s all pretty straightforward. Here are the details and what you need to do to stay compliant.

Minimum Wage

As of 1 April 2018, the minimum wage is increasing by 75 cents to $16.50 per hour, while the starting-out and training minimum wage will increase by 60 cents from $12.60 to 13.20 per hour.  

What do you need to do? You’ll need to adjust the pay rates in FlexiTime for any employees affected by these changes. If you have a large number of employees on the minimum wage, you can use the report centre to easily identify the employees that need their rates changed. For information about changing a pay rate in the middle of a pay period, see this support article.

Student Loans

The annual Student Loan repayment threshold increases to $19,448. This is the level above which Student Loan deductions will be taken.

What do you need to do? This change is automatically taken care of for you in FlexiTime and you don’t need to do anything. However, if you have direct debits set up for salaried employees you’ll need to change the amount to account for the small change in take home pay!

ACC

• The annual ACC earner levy threshold is going up to $126,286 for all pay periods paid on or after 1st April 2018. Income above the threshold is not subject to the ACC Earner Levy.

• There is no change to the ACC earner levy rate, which will remain at $1.39 for every $100 of liable income.

What do you need to do? Again, this is all sorted for you in FlexiTime. You might need to adjust any direct debit payments for highly paid salaried employees.

If you’ve got questions about any of these changes, or how they apply to your business, send our friendly support team an email: support@flexitime.co.nz.