Summary of the key law and content changes on ComplyWith (update as of 3 May 2019)

What laws have changed recently?

Several law changes came into effect on 1 April 2019, most relating to employment rights and payroll. You can read more about these and other changes in your Updater in your ComplyWith.

The 1 April law changes included the following:

  • New employment protections were added for people affected by domestic violence. These include:
    • a new entitlement to domestic violence leave in the Holidays Act
    • a new ground for a personal grievance for adverse treatment of employees affected by domestic violence was added to the Employment Relations Act
    • a new right for employees affected by domestic violence to request flexible working was added to the Employment Relations Act
    • treating employees or job applicants adversely because of domestic violence was added as an unlawful action in the Human Rights Act.
  • Payday filing came into force. Employers must now submit information to Inland Revenue every time they pay their employees instead of monthly schedules.
  • The minimum wage was increased from $16.50 to $17.70 by the Minimum Wage Order 2019.
  • Changes to the KiwiSaver Act including new employee contribution rates of 6% and 8%, changes to align with payday filing, and reducing a savings suspension from 5 years to 1 year (previously called a contributions holiday).

What’s coming up?

Significant changes to the Employment Relations Act come into force in May and June 2019. You can read more about these upcoming changes in this article from our last newsletter.

Other upcoming changes include:

  • From 1 June 2019, the Health and Safety at Work (Hazardous Substances) Regulations apply to hazardous waste. This is waste generated from a manufacturing or industrial process that is likely to contain a hazardous substance. New obligations around storing class 6 and class 8 hazardous substances also come into force.
  • On 1 July 2019, changes to the Education (Pastoral Care of International Students) Code of Practice come into force. These include:
    • new requirements about monitoring agents
    • detailed requirements about what must be included in the contract of enrolment, and the insurance that international students must have in place
    • expanding the definition of residential caregiver to include the manager of student accommodation operated by a tertiary education provider.
  • Ceiling and underfloor insulation that meets the requirements in the Residential Tenancies (Smoke Alarms and Insulation) Regulations 2016 must be installed in all residential rental properties by 1 July 2019.

What else has changed?

With the new payday filling requirements coming in force on 1 April 2019, we took the opportunity to refresh and improve our tax content.

Our tax content has always been at a high level but previously included many obligations with minimal commentaries. Our new content makes it easier to find your tax obligations and deploy targeted high-level obligations in a ComplyWith survey.

Some of the improvements are:

  • The obligations are now easily located in 1 piece of legislation called Income Tax Act 2007, Tax Administration Act 1994, and GST Act 1985 - Overview obligations.
  • There is now 1 simple overview compliance obligation for each type of tax.
  • We have transferred your existing allocations to the new obligations so there’s no extra work for administrators (although it would be a good idea to check the allocations are still appropriate).
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