New Zealand Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

WHAT NEW ZEALAND DOES AND DOES NOT HAVE. There is no contributory state pension, no unemployment insurance, no national health insurance and no general social security contribution. NZ Superannuation, public health and working-age benefits are funded from general taxation. The Income Insurance Scheme proposed in 2022 was abandoned and never enacted. So the complete mandatory payroll-contribution set for an ordinary private-sector employee is exactly: (1) KiwiSaver member deduction and compulsory employer contribution, (2) ACC Earners' Levy (employee only), (3) ACC Work Account Levy (employer only, industry-rated), (4) Working Safer Levy (employer only), with ESCT sitting on top of (1). Anyone reporting fewer branches has dropped the employer-only ones, which are real employer costs even though they never appear on a payslip. THE TRAPS, IN THE ORDER THEY BITE. 1. GST ON THE EARNERS' LEVY. SL 2025/18 reg 4(2)(a) states $1.52 per $100 for 2026/27 and reg 8 declares the amounts GST-exclusive. The rate actually deducted through PAYE is the GST-INCLUSIVE $1.75 per $100. A payroll engine that reads the regulation literally under-deducts by ~15%. Both figures are authentic; 1.75% is operative, and IRD's published maximum levy of $2,741.22 reconciles exactly to $156,641 × 1.75%. The same GST split applies to the ACC work and Working Safer levies (SL 2025/17 reg 24), except there GST is added on ACC's invoice rather than folded into a payroll rate. 2. THE 1 APRIL 2026 KIWISAVER STEP-UP IS DONE, AND THE 2028 ONE IS ALREADY LAW. The employee default and the compulsory employer contribution both went 3% to 3.5% on 1 April 2026 (Taxation (Budget Measures) Act 2025 ss 20(1) and 22(1), commencement s 2(5)). The move to 4% on 1 April 2028 is already enacted with deferred commencement (ss 20(2), 20(4), 22(2), commencement s 2(6)) — it is not a proposal. 3. THE 3% RATE STILL EXISTS BUT IS NO LONGER FREELY SELECTABLE. From 1 April 2026, s 64(2) offers only 3.5%, 4%, 6%, 8% and 10%. 3% is available under s 64(1)(c) only to a member granted a rate reduction under subpart 3B, for a period of no less than 92 days and no more than one year (s 101L(3)); applications opened 1 February 2026. Critically, the employer's matching drop to 3% is DISCRETIONARY — s 101D(4)(a) ends "and, in either case, the employer chooses to apply this rate". Auto-matching the employer down to 3% is defensible but not mandatory, and hard-coding it is wrong. A second, separate 3% route exists for complying superannuation fund members on a 3% rate under clause 7 of schedule 28 of the Income Tax Act 2007 — also at the employer's election. 4. THE LEGACY 4% DEFAULT. Section 64(1)(ab) fixes 4%, not 3.5%, for an employee for whom s 60(1)(a), (b) or (c) first applied before 1 April 2009 and who has never given a rate notice. It is still in force until 1 April 2028. Defaulting every unspecified employee to 3.5% mis-states this cohort. 5. OPT-OUT, AND AN OFF-BY-ONE. KiwiSaver is auto-enrolment with opt-out, and only for a person STARTING NEW EMPLOYMENT who is 18 or over and under the NZ superannuation qualification age (s 10). Existing employees are never auto-enrolled; 16–17 year olds and 65+ can only opt in. The opt-out window in s 16 is the 13th day after starting to the CLOSE OF THE 55TH DAY. IRD's inclusive rendering (day 14 to day 56) describes the same two calendar days. 6. RESIDENCE STATUS DECIDES KIWISAVER LIABILITY. Section 6(1) applies the Act only to a person who is, or normally is, living in New Zealand (with a narrow State services carve-out for staff serving overseas on NZ terms) AND is a New Zealand citizen or entitled under the Immigration Act 2009 to be in New Zealand indefinitely. Holders of temporary, visitor, student or work visas cannot join KiwiSaver. So for a temporary work-visa holder there is NO member deduction and NO compulsory employer contribution — but the ACC earners' levy is still deducted and the employer still pays work and Working Safer levies on their earnings. Getting this backwards over-deducts foreign staff and under-costs employers. Australian citizens and NZ/Australian residence-class visa holders DO qualify. Section 6(2) is the mirror image on the employer side: only NZ-resident employers, or those carrying on business from a fixed establishment in NZ, are bound; others may choose to apply the Act. 7. KIWISAVER HAS NO CEILING; ACC DOES. There is no maximum earnings figure anywhere in the KiwiSaver Act — contributions run on every dollar of gross salary or wages. The $156,641 cap belongs only to the ACC levies. Applying the ACC cap to KiwiSaver is a frequent and expensive error. 8. CEILING vs THRESHOLD. $156,641 (2026/27) is a CONTRIBUTION CEILING on liable earnings, set by SL 2025/18 reg 5(2) for the earners' levy and separately by SL 2025/17 reg 6(1)(b) for the work levy. It is not a registration threshold and not an opt-out point — there is no opting out of ACC. There is no earnings floor for a PAYE employee; the minimum liable earnings rules in SL 2025/18 regs 6 and 7 apply to self-employed persons only. The earners' levy ceiling is legally per earner per tax year but is applied per employer through PAYE, so a person with two jobs is over-deducted and squared up afterwards (ACC's Multiple Employer Adjustment). 9. THE CEC FORMULA IS NOT 3.5% × GROSS. Section 101D(1) is (payment of gross salary or wages × CEC rate) − other contributions − hybrid schemes amount. "Other contributions" (s 101D(5)) captures contributions to schemes registered before 17 May 2007 and succeeding schemes; the hybrid amount (ss 101D(6)–(8)) is member's contribution × vesting percentage. Employers with legacy super schemes lawfully pay less than 3.5%. 10. KIWISAVER GROSS IS NOT PAYE GROSS. Section 4(1)'s definition excludes redundancy payments, Voluntary Bonding Scheme payments funded by MPI/Health/Education, overseas accommodation and cost-of-living allowances, employee share scheme benefits treated as extra pay, employer-paid weekly compensation (unless the employer elects otherwise), and the value of board, lodging or a house (or an allowance in lieu). Extra pay, bonuses, commission, gratuities and overtime ARE included. ACC liable earnings follow a different definition again. 11. THE AGE-65 STOP NO LONGER CARRIES A FIVE-YEAR OVERLAY. Compulsory employer contributions stop when the member becomes entitled to withdraw under clause 4 of the KiwiSaver scheme rules (s 101C(c)). As at 1 April 2026, clause 4 entitles withdrawal on reaching the New Zealand superannuation qualification age alone: Schedule 1 clause 4(4)–(6), which carried the legacy five-years-of-membership lock for pre-1 July 2019 joiners, were REPEALED on 31 March 2026 by s 220(2) of the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2025–26, Compliance Simplification, and Remedial Measures) Act 2026 (2026 No 8), and clause 4(2) was amended by s 220(1) to drop the words "Subject to subclauses (4) to (6)". Any engine still applying "65 and 5 years' membership" will keep paying CEC for late joiners who are in fact already entitled to withdraw. IRD's current retirement page states simply that a member is eligible to withdraw at the age of eligibility, currently 65. 12. DEDUCTIBILITY. Neither employee-side amount reduces taxable income. The KiwiSaver member contribution is CALCULATED on gross but TAKEN FROM PAY AFTER PAYE — IRD's own example: gross $600, less PAYE $94.02, less KiwiSaver $21.00 (3.5% of $600) = net $484.98. The ACC earners' levy is withheld inside PAYE and is likewise not an income-tax deduction. New Zealand has nothing resembling Australian salary sacrifice here. 13. ESCT COMES OUT OF THE EMPLOYER CONTRIBUTION. The employee's account receives less than 3.5%. IRD's worked example: $91 gross CEC, $15.93 ESCT at 17.5%, $75.07 net into the scheme. Employment information must report the net contribution and the ESCT separately. 14. AGE RULES CHANGED ON 1 APRIL 2026. Section 101C(b) now reads "is aged 16 or over" (amended from 18 by 2025 No 26 s 21), so 16–17 year old members now attract the compulsory employer contribution. There is no upper age limit written into s 101C; the CEC instead stops on withdrawal entitlement under clause 4 (see trap 11). Savings suspensions, KS51 non-deduction notices, defined benefit scheme membership (s 101C(d)) and a clause 12B life-shortening congenital condition withdrawal (s 101C(cb)) also stop the CEC. 15. EMPLOYER-ONLY LEVIES ARE NOT PAYROLL DEDUCTIONS. The work levy and Working Safer levy are invoiced annually by ACC on liable payroll declared to Inland Revenue, not withheld per pay period. They belong in employer cost-to-hire, never on a payslip. 16. LEVY YEAR = TAX YEAR, 1 APRIL TO 31 MARCH. Every ACC and KiwiSaver figure above is keyed to that year, not to a calendar year. SCOPE EXCLUSIONS. Genuine independent contractors are outside KiwiSaver and the employer levies (they pay their own ACC levies as self-employed persons, with different minimum and maximum liable earnings under SL 2025/18 regs 6–7 and SL 2025/17 reg 7 and Schedules 4–6). Schedular payment recipients, shareholder-employees not on PAYE, and private domestic workers each sit under modified rules. Student loan repayments and child support deductions are separate withholding obligations, not social insurance, and are excluded here. RETRIEVAL NOTE. legislation.govt.nz returns HTTP 403 to server-side fetching and must be read by driving a real browser. Its old-format URLs (/act/public/2006/0040/latest/...) redirect to new-format ones (/act/public/2006/40/en/latest/), and appending whole.html to a new-format URL returns 404. Section bodies for large Acts are present in the DOM of the part page but not surfaced by naive article-text extraction, so they must be pulled from document.body.innerText. ird.govt.nz, acc.co.nz and mbie.govt.nz fetch normally; the ACC Levy Guidebook PDF exceeds fetch size limits. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: none — New Zealand is a unitary state with no regional or territorial-authority payroll contributions. The ACC Work Account levy varies by INDUSTRY (classification unit) and by employer claims experience and safety management practices, never by region. The Chatham Islands are inside the NZ payroll system; Tokelau, Niue and the Cook Islands are outside it. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON: Deliberately left as null rather than guessed: 1. ACC WORK ACCOUNT LEVY — rate_employer and rate_total are null. There is genuinely no single national rate. Schedule 2 of SL 2025/17 prescribes 537 separate classification-unit rates for 2026/27, spanning $0.02 to $5.29 per $100 of liable earnings (GST-exclusive), which I parsed in full rather than sampled. Two further employer-specific layers then apply: experience rating discounts and loadings under the Accident Compensation (Experience Rating) Regulations 2025 (SL 2025/19), and upward adjustments for safety management practices under SL 2025/17 Part 4. I have not published the Cabinet-agreed AVERAGE work levy ($0.69 per $100 for 2026/27, agreed 2 December 2024 and published by MBIE) as a rate, because no employer is charged it and it has no statutory force — it is a pricing aggregate, not a levy rate. Serving the correct value requires the employer's classification unit; the ceiling ($156,641 per employee) is national and is served. 2. ESCT — rate_employer and rate_total are null. ESCT is banded on each employee's ESCT rate threshold amount (10.5% / 17.5% / 30% / 33% / 39%), with two further flat rates in s RD 67(b) and (c), so no single rate exists. The full band table, now read from the primary instrument, is given in the instrument field. 3. WORKING SAFER LEVY / WORK LEVY TAX-DEDUCTIBILITY — tax_deductible is null for both. These are employer costs, not employee contributions, so the field's question (is the EMPLOYEE contribution deductible before income tax) has no employee-side answer. Their deductibility as a business expense to the employer is a company-tax question outside this dataset's scope. 4. MONTHLY CEILINGS — ceiling_monthly is null for every scheme. No instrument fixes a monthly figure. SL 2025/18 reg 5 and SL 2025/17 reg 6 set ANNUAL maximum liable earnings only; PAYE applies the cap across the tax year through the IR340/IR341 tables rather than by a stated monthly cap. Dividing $156,641 by 12 gives $13,053.42, but that is arithmetic on my part and not a value any New Zealand instrument states, so it is not served as a fact. 5. WITHDRAWN. The previous version of this record refused the 2027/28 GST-inclusive earners' levy rate on the stated ground that "Inland Revenue has not yet published the operative GST-inclusive figure". I checked that page myself and the assertion was false: IRD's ACC earners' levy rates page publishes, under its own heading "These amounts include GST", a top row of 1 April 2027 – 31 March 2028, $1.83 per $100 (1.83%), maximum liable earnings $160,244, maximum levy $2,932.47. The figure is authority-published, not researcher arithmetic, and it is now served in full under scheduled_changes. Refusing a published figure is as much a failure as guessing an unpublished one. 6. No refusal was needed on nationality grounds — unlike several Gulf schemes, no New Zealand branch is restricted to nationals. The KiwiSaver residence and immigration-status condition is a genuine liability switch and is reported in full rather than refused. 7. NOT REFUSED BUT FLAGGED: the Working Safer Levy ceiling of $156,641 is served, but no instrument fixes it. It rests on ACC's administrative practice of computing the Work levy and the Working Safer levy on one capped liable payroll, corroborated by ACC's own WorkPlace Cover invoice guidance and by the HSWA s 201(3) deeming provision. The provenance is stated honestly in that branch rather than dressed up as a regulation. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE: Already legislated, with dates. Re-verify before each of these. 1 APRIL 2027 (start of the 2027/28 levy year) — ACC. Earners' levy rises to $1.59 per $100 GST-exclusive (SL 2025/18 reg 4(3)(a)). The OPERATIVE GST-INCLUSIVE FIGURE IS PUBLISHED, not estimated: Inland Revenue's ACC earners' levy rates page states, under the heading "These amounts include GST", 1 April 2027 to 31 March 2028 — $1.83 per $100 (1.83%), maximum liable earnings $160,244, maximum levy $2,932.47. (These reconcile exactly: $1.59 × 1.15 = $1.8285, rounded to $1.83; $160,244 × 1.83% = $2,932.47.) Maximum liable earnings for BOTH the earners' levy and the work levy rise to $160,244 (SL 2025/18 reg 5(3); SL 2025/17 reg 6(1)(c) and 6(2)(c)). Work Account levy rates switch to Schedule 3 of SL 2025/17 (reg 5(4)). Note the drafting: reg 4(3), reg 5(3) and Schedule 3 all apply to the 2027/28 tax year "and any later tax year", so these values persist indefinitely unless new regulations are made — there is NO automatic annual uprating mechanism. New levy regulations normally follow an ACC consultation round and a Cabinet decision, so expect replacement regulations for the 2028/29–2030/31 period to be made in late 2027 or early 2028. Re-verify deadline: 1 March 2027, then again 1 March 2028. 1 APRIL 2028 — KiwiSaver, second step-up. The employee default and the compulsory employer contribution both rise from 3.5% to 4%. Instruments, all in the Taxation (Budget Measures) Act 2025 (2025 No 26) with commencement fixed by its s 2(6): s 20(2) replaces KiwiSaver Act s 64(1)(a) and (ab) with a single paragraph reading "4% of the employee's gross salary or wages", which also ABOLISHES the legacy pre-2009 4% / 3.5% split by collapsing both into one 4% default; s 20(4) deletes "3.5%," from the s 64(2) list of electable rates, leaving 4%, 6%, 8% and 10%; s 22(2) replaces "3.5%" with "4%" in the CEC rate at s 101D(4)(b). Section 24 of the same Act also commences on 1 April 2028 but is NOT a rate change — it merely deletes "(ab)," from KiwiSaver Act s 101S(1), a consequential tidy-up flowing from the disappearance of s 64(1)(ab). The 3% temporary-rate-reduction floor in s 64(1)(c) and s 101D(4)(a) is not touched by any of these provisions and survives the 2028 step. Re-verify deadline: 1 March 2028. NO SCHEDULED CHANGE for the Working Safer levy (LI 2016/20 reg 3 has stood at 8 cents per $100 since 2016 and no amendment is pending; reg 4 was last replaced on 1 April 2025 at the same rate) or for the ESCT bands (Schedule 1 Part D Table 1 was last replaced with effect from 1 April 2025 by s 37(3) of the Taxation (Budget Measures) Act 2024, and is unchanged for 2026/27). Watch item, not a scheduled change: the Accident Compensation (Work Account Levies) Amendment Regulations 2026 (SL 2026/30) amended SL 2025/17 with effect from 1 April 2026, but only by replacing reg 23 (interest rate on Work Account levy overpaid) — it did NOT alter any classification-unit rate. Further amendment regulations in this series could alter rates mid-cycle, so the work levy schedules should be re-read rather than assumed stable between the three-year pricing rounds. SOURCING CAVEATS: Confidence is "primary" for every served value: all rates, ceilings and splits in this record were read verbatim from the consolidated primary instruments on legislation.govt.nz (KiwiSaver Act 2006 as at 1 April 2026; Income Tax Act 2007; SL 2025/18 as made 24 February 2025; SL 2025/17 as at 1 April 2026; LI 2016/20 as at 1 April 2025; HSWA 2015), with Inland Revenue and ACC used only where the operative figure is an authority publication rather than a regulation (the GST-inclusive earners' levy rates) or where the practice is administrative (the Working Safer levy cap). One genuine soft spot remains and is disclosed rather than hidden: the Working Safer Levy ceiling is authority practice, not a regulated figure (see refused item 7). The ESCT branch, which the previous version of this record flagged as unable to reach the primary text, is now sourced directly to Income Tax Act 2007 s RD 67 and Schedule 1 Part D clause 1 Table 1, including the amendment note fixing the 1 April 2025 replacement. That branch has moved from corroborated-by-IRD to primary. Researched against primary instruments and then attacked by an independent adversarial verification pass before being served (2026-08-08). Where that pass found a defect, the correction it proved from the instrument has been applied. Employee and employer shares are stated separately: the employee figure is what leaves the payslip, the employer figure is cost of employment and is not a deduction.

Get it programmatically

curl https://ausref.dev/v1/nz/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://ausref.dev/v1/nz/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://ausref.dev/provenance/nz/social-contributions

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The same figure elsewhere: Papua New Guinea · Samoa · Solomon Islands · Tonga · Vanuatu · all 8