Inland Revenue is introducing a new way for customers to get certainty on how tax law applies to their situation.

The process is shorter and cheaper than other binding rulings available from Inland Revenue.

The short-process rulings service will be available from 1 October 2019 and is a way for individuals and organisations, with an annual gross income of $20 million or less, to get a binding ruling from Inland Revenue.

It must relate to tax of less than $1 million in the relevant year.

Short-process rulings are intended for individuals and small-to-medium sized businesses with significant transactions, or circumstances that have significant financial consequences.

They are designed for when people need certainty but didn’t want to use the existing binding rulings service because of its greater complexity in the application and cost.

Short-process rulings will take about six weeks to process. If a situation we are asked to rule on is as complex as for larger customers, we will need more time to consider the issues properly.

IR has limited the scope of a short-process ruling application to a single tax type. A short-process ruling will cost customers $2,000 (including GST).

To get a short-process ruling, customers will need to ask a question related to a tax, duty or levy that IR is responsible for. They will also need to tell IR what general tax outcome that they expect.

More information about short-process rulings can be found on the IRD website: https://www.ird.govt.nz/spr

From the IRD News website | © Copyright 2020 Inland Revenue.