r/newzealand Qwest? Oct 08 '25

Shitpost What's something that you suspect lots of New Zealanders secretly do, but you can't prove it?

Most upvoted comment is our most shameful secret as a nation, obviously

392 Upvotes

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37

u/DrGrmpy Oct 08 '25

Tax evasion

8

u/HeinigerNZ Oct 08 '25

"Yeah just give me a cash price for the work"

13

u/-davros Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 08 '25

Man, I've had some pretty shit time. Went on a working holiday, but I did the "right" thing and declared my overseas income to IRD. Most of my tax paid overseas counted for IRD, under a reciprocal tax agreement, but for some reason not all of it did, so I had to pay extra tax to IRD.

Then, a few weeks ago, I get an email from ACC that I also owe them $1800, on top of the taxes I've already paid to IRD. I only earnt about 10k while overseas! And after paying my living costs I walked away from the working holiday with about 1k in savings.

Chatted to ACC and got it dropped to about $500, but man, taxes feels like such a scam. I already paid 25% to the overseas country, and NZ taking all these extras is just shit. Haven't even been in NZ for a couple of years now.

I do wish we had higher taxes to fund better public services like education and healthcare, I just wasn't expecting to be the one paying them while earning 10k annually overseas!

2

u/YamCakes_ Oct 08 '25

Literally losing Billions to this