Explained: When to expect a tax refund – Watch on TVNZ+<\/a><\/p>\nSo what can people expect to get?<\/p>\n
Last year the average tax refund – for those who got one – was $472. But to balance that out, 1 million Kiwis received less than $20.<\/p>\n
On the other hand – of the 3.6 million people issued a tax assessment, about 10% owed tax.<\/p>\n
Rebecca Baker, segment leader for individual taxpayers at Inland Revenue, said it all comes down to your personal situation.<\/p>\n
“If you have moved jobs or had a period of time not working, if you’ve taken on another job, done lots of overtime, there’s so many factors that go into why you may not have paid enough tax or overpaid your tax.”<\/p>\n
![\"Rebecca](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/rebecca-baker-segment-leader-for-individual-taxpayers-at-inl-V74VR72QZND6NNBFWMUECCQPQM.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Rebecca Baker, segment leader for individual taxpayers at Inland Revenue. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
Automatic assessments<\/p>\n
She says if you’ve worked for the same employer, worked limited overtime and similar, you’re more likely to not have tax to paid or have tax owed.<\/p>\n
Tax assessments are issued after the tax year ends on the 31 March. The assessments are now automatic. <\/p>\n
Inland Revenue calculates them using the information they hold, meaning for the most part you don’t have to do a thing.<\/p>\n
The system looks at your total income, how much tax you’ve paid on that, and calculates a result.<\/p>\n
Assessments will be issued until the end of July, so not everyone will receive them on the same day.<\/p>\n
To make the process smoother Baker encourages people to make sure they are registered to MyIR and check their details are up to date.<\/p>\n
Explained: When to expect a tax refund – Watch on TVNZ+<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Income tax assessments will start being sent out by Inland Revenue this weekend. This will let taxpayers know…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[219,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-440654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-economy","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}