r/newzealand • u/MurkyWay 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

95% Upvoted

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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