After a relatively quiet few years through the Covid pandemic, Inland Revenue’s (IR) audit activity has slowly started to increase over the past few years. In 2021, IR’s campaign had a focus on the real estate sector, where the concern was around real estate agents claiming a disproportionately large amount of expenses relative to [...]

BAU is a phrase that is used to describe “business as usual”. It is a good barometer of whether anything strange or unusual has occurred or whether things have been BAU. Invariably, non BAU transactions will occur: an insurance payout, a large asset purchase, a fine or a penalty. This then leads to the [...]

Prior to March 2020, in most cases, if a business donated trading stock it resulted in 'deemed income' equivalent to its market value. This resulted in the receiving business being taxed on a deemed profit margin, even though no cash was received. The 'donated trading stock rule' was initially introduced by IR to counter tax avoidance and address [...]

For businesses that trade through a company, circumstances might arise in which the 'shareholders consider selling a minority stake in the company' to a key employee or group of employees. This could be to ensure key talent is ‘locked in’ for the long term, a means of succession or to link effort to reward. [...]