The EOFY has finished, how early can tax returns be filed with the IRD?

Income Tax returns - Businesses
The IRD doesn't release the relevant forms/info that accountants need to file until late April - early May. Therefore, it is not possible to finalise and file any tax returns for the year that just finished until then.

Our accountants can start doing some of the prep work, but can not complete your return until the necessary IRD info has been made available.

Income Tax returns - Individuals

Individual/Personal returns aren't processed until all reportable income has been filed with the IRD. This includes salary/wages, investment income (including bank interest), dividends and PIE (including Kiwisaver).

It is common for interest and dividend income to not be finalised until May, when RWT certificates or tax statements are issued. PIE providers have until 15th May to submit their customer's income information to the IRD.

For these reasons, we do not process individual returns until we are sure that all your income sources have been accounted for. If they are processed too early and income was missing, the return would have to be amended and any tax owed (including provisional) would need to be re-calculated.

Estimated earliest filing
In summary, as a general rule of thumb, the earliest that the first client returns would be filed is approximately late May / early June. This is our best estimate, and in reality can be earlier or later depending on the factors outlined above among other things (e.g. any queries or other pending info).