As you may already be aware, a Cost of Living payment was introduced this year to help with the rising costs of inflation.
To get the Cost of Living payments, an individual must have earned under $70,000 in the 2022 tax year, not get the NZ Superannuation, be aged 18 or older, be an NZ tax resident and present in NZ and not be in prison.
The Cost of Living payment was $350 and for most people this was split into 3 payments being $116.67 on 1st August 2022, $116.67 on 1st September 2022 and $116.66 on 3rd October 2022.
In order to qualify for the payments on these dates, your tax return must have been filed and assessed before the payment date. In the event that your tax return was not filed before that date, you would not receive the payment, however IRD will continue to check for your tax assessment up to 31st March 2023. Once your tax return is filed, if you meet the eligibility criteria, IRD will issue the Cost of Living payment in one lump sum.
For the August payment, IRD checked for people being present in NZ was the physical address on file. For the later payments, they added extra checks such as checking wages payments in the prior two months and checking customs records. It is therefore possible that this information was incorrect and you either received the payment when you weren’t eligible of vice versa.
If you have not received the Cost of Living payment and feel you should be entitled to it, you can check through your myIR account login by selecting:
- “I want to …”, then
- “Cost of Living Payment eligibility” to see why you have not received the payment
Note, if you have received this payment in error, this must be returned to IRD.
Please touch base with your client manager if you believe either of these situations apply to you.