COVID 19 Wage subsidy

[Neil_M]

Hi Everyone

With the announcement of the NZ Governments wage subsidy, here’s some additional information you may find helpful:

Employers will need to pay 80% of their employee’s wages during this time. This will be made up of the $585 subsidy (for employees who work 20+ hours) or $350 (for employees who work less than 20 hours) which is a Gross amount and supplemented with the employee’s wages up to 80% of what they would normally earn.  You will have to pay PAYE on this amount.

This is a taxable subsidy and is treated as a normal payment. This means other items, like Kiwisaver, Student Loan, and Child Support payments etc will still need to be paid. You'll still need to do your payday filing on theses pays too.

To keep it clear for your employee’s and yourselves, we recommend setting up a new payroll item for the subsidy payment. Depending on your software this may be called something different, however the principle remains the same. You can find more detailed steps for your products below:

Ace Payroll

MYOB Essentials

MYOB Payroll

You can find more information on the NZ Government’s fact sheet on the wage subsidy