It is important to understand how your investments are performing and why they are performing like they are. Morningstar publish a survey of KiwiSaver returns every quarter. This survey covers the majority of the major KiwiSaver providers, and there is always an interesting commentary at the front of the report. To access the Morningstar December…
Investments and taxation if you are a US Citizen FATCA, or to give its full title, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act is legislation enacted in March 2010 by the US Government. This has caused major compliance issues for the providers of investment options around the world, and a number of providers in NZ have…
When you return to live in New Zealand, you need to be aware of the taxation issues relating to your personal superannuation and investment arrangements. In 2007 the Taxation of investments changed, and as a result NZ now has a relatively complicated taxation of investments regime. One of the results of this is that if…
KiwiSaver was launched on 1st July 2007 and is a low fee and subsidised retirement savings scheme available to permanent NZ residents. You can join up to the age of 65, and your funds are ‘locked in’ until you reach the age of eligibility for NZ Super, which is currently 65, or for five years,…
It is important that you make sure that any existing insurance cover that you have where you live will cover you while you set up in New Zealand. This is for life insurance, trauma insurance, income protection (disability) insurance. Your health insurance is highly unlikely to cover you in New Zealand, which means that you…
There are a number of financial planning issues that you need to be aware of when returning to live in New Zealand, and I have posted a comment for each different topic, see the links below in this post. For NZ Superannuation, the issues you need to be aware of are: 1. Eligibility – there…
How do you know whether your investment portfolio is the most appropriate one for you? There are a number of methods, including gut instinct – looking at the description of the fund – ie Defensive, Conservative, Balanced, Growth, Aggressive and ‘feeling’ that that one is right for you. However, a more systematic approach is to…
Dying is not something that we like to think about. But when we are dealing with our insurances, it is something that we have to address. It creates a lot of emotions and some people prefer not to think about any of the issues surrounding death. For other people though, they would prefer to make…
PIR’s or Prescribed Investor Rates are the taxation rates that apply to PIE’s (Portfolio Investment Entities). A PIE is an investment structure that is available for managed funds, and by using PIE’s for your investments (many KiwiSaver funds are PIE’s), you may be able to reduce your taxation obligation. This is because the taxation rates…
From 1st April 2013 the minimum employee and employer contributions are increasing to 3%. Both these contributions are currently 2%, and the employer contribution has tax deducted from it at the ESCT (Employer Superannuation Contribution Tax Rate). If you are paid through the PAYE system, your employee and employer contribution will automatically increase. You can …
KiwiSaver was launched on 1st July 2007. It has now been in place for 5 1/2 years. There has been a lot of development and changes over this time period, and we are now entering a consolidation phase. During this period, the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) came into being in mid 2011 with wider powers…
This purchase of the Tower health insurance business has been given the go ahead. NIB have stated that they want to expand the amount of health insurance coverage provided in New Zealand and will be working through advisers and directly selling to the public as well. The purchase price was reported to be $103 million.…