Is Your Business Being Affected by Coronavirus?

The below outlines what help is available to businesses that are affected by Coronavirus. If your business is affected, contact us and we can help you devise a plan to help minimise the effect.

The wage subsidy scheme will see the Government pay employers up to $150,000 per business over the next 12 weeks to keep employees on. This will pay up to $585 per full-time worker and $385 per part-time employee. Any business that can show a 30 per cent decline in revenue for any month between January and June, when compared with the same month last year, will be eligible. It is available from Tuesday.
A new sick leave scheme will see the same amount of cash be made available for any workers or contractors who need to self-isolate for the required 14 days because of Coronavirus. It will also pay out the entire sickness period for anyone infected with Covid-19. This is expected to cost $126m and apply to about 27,000 people - but this number is not much better than a rough guess. Eligibility for this new sick leave scheme is not available for those who are able to work from home. Employers are still expected to meet normal sick leave and employment law obligations.
A $2.8b package of tax changes will also be introduced for business - with interest waived for some late tax payments, more deductions for low value assets, deprecation deductions for commercial and industrial buildings, and a higher provisional tax threshold. - see below for more detail.

Ways we can help business’s If you have concerns about upcoming tax payments, future tax benefit changes, staffing queries or would like to talk through options please get in touch with us. We will help you work through the options that will suit your business. Tax Changes Announced 17 March 2020 At 2pm yesterday, the New Zealand Government announced a Business Continuity Package to assist businesses struggling due to the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak.

There are five proposals related to tax

Giving Inland Revenue the discretion to remit use-of-money interest (UOMI) for customers significantly adversely affected by COVID-19.
Increasing the provisional tax threshold from $2,500 to $5,000 from 2020/2021. This is from April 2020, for the 2021 financial year.
Increasing the small asset depreciation threshold from $500 to $1,000 – and to $5,000 for the 2020/21 tax year.
Allowing depreciation on commercial and industrial buildings from 2020/2021.
Removing the hours test from the In-Work Tax Credit (IWTC) from 1 July 2020.