Monday, May 3, 2010

Tax Drama

This morning while sorting my donation tax rebate I logged into the IRD site to check my earnings and decide what to do with it. I did the quick calculation thing and found that I apparently owe $1.5k to the IRD for the last financial year. Thinking I'd had a blonde attack I rang them and got one of their people to do the calculation, and they came up with the same horrendous number, but no reasonable explanation other than my redundancy payout last year accounting for some, but not all. 

My first thoughts are what a fukkin rort. I'm a salary earner so all my income is taxed at source at the rates supplied by the IRD. I can claim a rebate for the redundancy payout but that only deals to a third of the debt. My employers have deducted the PAYE correctly at the correct tax code.

If had a six figure income and masses of investments then I would expect a bill like this, but my income for that year (tho inflated due to redundancy) was still well below the Wellington average, so I fail to see why there is such a big bill.

It's a fukking rort, that is all, and yet another slap in the face for a hard working tax payer. If I was hiding income in trusts a la Mr English et al, then of course I wouldn't be moaning. It appears to be a debt that is created by the PAYE system in place in this country. I didn't create the debt, the fukkin tax system did and I get to suffer. I already pay enough tax each week to support a pensioner and a beneficiary but apparently that's not enough. I really don't think I'm getting value for money on the tax I pay each week.

Yes I was made redundant last year and I could have gone poor me, poor me and become a beneficiary, instead I chose to bust my arse and got myself another job. This is my reward. Just when I can finally think yay now I can actually save a bit and start looking at future investments, (or Mummy treats) I will instead be saving for a debt that I didn't create.

It's a fukkin rort, and I'm now dithering between joining the VRWC and their free market user pays economics, or running with the Pinko's and saying fuk the rich!

10 comments:

Cactus Kate said...

Well to be honest UnPC being a wage earner and getting a tax bill simply means you didn't pay enough to start with so you haven't lost anything.

But think of a tax system where no PAYE was deducted and you had to write a kick arse cheque to the bastards at the end of every year.

That's what we do in HK. In NZ think of all the morons you are funding who would have already spent it.

But congratulations on such a logical post. Far too logical for a lesbian mind you, too many of whom think Helen Clark was the 2nd coming of Jesus.

You sure you do chicks?

unPC lesbian said...

But I have paid exactly what the tax dept tax tables say should have been decducted each week.....

However if the other system was in place yes I would anally be saving enough each week to pay the final bill.

Maybe I'm not a lesbian as only currently doing "once were chicks".....maybe I should rectify.

Helen who?

nzm said...

Huh - same thing happened to me in 2003 when a group of us was made redundant from a Kodak NZ subsidiary. Our healthy redundancies were first hacked away by PAYE, and then we had to pay extra at year end. My tax bill was stupid. I paid and left NZ.

Anonymous said...

That totally sux!! I got bitten by this once and the idiots at IRD were not able to tell me why?? Call again and get someone else to look at it - you may be suprised!!

unPC lesbian said...

Yeah it sucks. Like NZM said I think it's to do with the payout - however everyone has followed the rules and deducted PAYE as per the correct rates, but it's the banding system that creates the issue it seems.

So not only did I have to go through the god awful process of redundancy, my reward for surviving is this huge bill!

nzm said...

The reason given was that the redundancy payments caused most of us to enter into a higher earnings bracket where the tax % was higher, hence the extra tax due.

unPC lesbian said...

The IRD girly tried saying that as well but when I looked I saw that my income (and sdly that is my total income including redundancy) was still in the one income band.

http://www.ird.govt.nz/how-to/taxrates-codes/itaxsalaryandwage-incometaxrates.html

I'm ignoring it for a week or so, and will deal with it when I get back from adventuring.

The Russian said...

Oh,this is just crap! IRD seriously need to get their shit together: my mate just went through a huge ongoing battle with them.She apparently owed $4500 (throuh no fault of her own) and she is only a commis chef and makes $16/hr! She DID pay it off,but that was working 12-14 hour days with no time off for a LONG time

unPC lesbian said...

'allo darlin, welcome to the blog world.

Glad I'm no longer on hospo wages, sod trying to pay a debt back at that rate, would be a lifetime achievement.

Anonymous said...

I can't figure out why tax payments can't be more accurate with computer software and all to do it. Last month I arbitrarily got $100 less in my pay for the fortnight... on investigation it turns out that I 'didn't pay enough tax the month before' - which really means payroll didn't deduct enough tax off me (wtf?). I mean, it's not like they have to sit down and add it up with a calculator or anything...

 
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