What every New Zealand employer has to get right — PAYE and payday filing, KiwiSaver, the Holidays Act, minimum wage, employment agreements and wage records — answered clearly and linked back to the source: Inland Revenue and Employment New Zealand.
The journey views: what happens, in order, from the first hire to the last pay.
What you collect and what you pay at each stage — from the written agreement to the final holiday-pay calculation.
The setup checklistEvery step from IRD registration to first compliant payday, in order — the printable standalone.
The things that have to be in place to run payroll legally in New Zealand. Each item links to a full explainer. Want the printable, standalone version? See the payroll setup checklist.
Mandatory clauses, the 90-day trial as it stands today, and the signature trap.
Read →No declaration → the 45% no-notification rate. The tax code drives everything.
Read →The enrolment pack within 7 days, the opt-out window, and employer contributions from day one.
Read →Payday filing wants each hire's details before or with the first Employment Information return.
Read →The adult, starting-out and training rates — and the Wages Protection Act deduction rules.
Read →Leave in weeks, the greater-of pay formulas — the machinery that cost employers $237m in remediation.
Read →Two record sets, six years, reversed evidential burden if they're missing.
Read →IRD number → employer registration → myIR; the branch register is a separate axis.
Read →The New Zealand guide is being built the way Australia's and Germany's were: written against government sources, adversarially verified underneath, and corrected as the law moves. The first wave is live below; the operator research (registrations, payday filing from overseas, payment rails) is in flight and follows as its own section.
$23.95/hour from 1 April 2026, the starting-out and training rates, and the Wages Protection Act deduction rules.
Employment agreements & wage recordsThe written-agreement duty (s 65), the 90-day trial today, the two record sets kept 6 years — and why payslips aren't actually mandatory.
Leave & the Holidays ActFour weeks in weeks (not hours), the greater-of pay formulas, 12 public holidays, and why remediation cost employers $237m.
PAYE & KiwiSaver, explainedThe tax bands, the ACC earners' levy inside PAYE, KiwiSaver at 3.5% employer (4% from 2028), ESCT and student loans.
The same deadlines two ways: the month as you run it, and the year as the law schedules it.
Payday → the 2-working-day EI return → paying IRD by the 20th — every clock in order.
The payroll yearThe 1-April tax year: minimum-wage uprating, ACC invoicing, the KiwiSaver steps to 2028.
Paying employees & paying IRDTwo separate rails: net wages under the Wages Protection Act (money by default; bank/cheque needs written consent), and the PAYE deductions to IRD via the EMP account by the 20th.
Running New Zealand payroll from outside New Zealand — what attaches to you, what doesn't, and the filing and payment clocks, written from our adversarially-verified research corpus.
No presence, no PAYE — the OS 21/04 asymmetry, the IR56 route, the safe harbour, and the statutory intermediary role.
Registrations & employer IDsIRD number → employer registration → myIR, the Companies Office axis, and what payday filing needs about each hire.
Who governs NZ payrollIRD owns almost everything — plus MBIE, ACC and the Companies Office. One collector, not ninety.
Payday filing & paying IRDThe 2-working-day EI clock, the real $50k and $500k threshold rules, and why filing and money are separate rails.
Ledra Pay models New Zealand payroll — PAYE, the ACC earners’ levy, KiwiSaver, student loans and the Holidays Act — against verified IRD and Employment New Zealand sources, behind one embedded API. Live gross-to-net compute and payday-filing rails are on the roadmap, shaped with design partners.
See NZ coverage →