Baqir Hussain

And there's also a lot of additional compliance that needs to be met along the way for businesses.

Oh, yes, absolutely.

And the most common examples being TikTok advice about this expense or that expense you can claim, but that's maybe catered to the US market or even the Australian market.

And then the applicability of that to New Zealand is, of course, different.

And part of the confusion arises from there.

So I generally categorize that into three types of people.

So you have the regular salaried people, you then have families, and then you have people who own or operate businesses, which includes self-employed contractors and general business owners.

For salary owners, the biggest misconception is that where they think that, oh, I'm now going to pay 30% tax on my whole income and my total salary, say, if we cross the 50 or 53,000 threshold.

Whereas that's not the case because New Zealand operates in a progressive as a progressive tax system.

And so it's only the additional income that gets taxed.

So that even sometimes keeps you behind in terms of your career because you think, oh, I don't want to be taxed 30% or 33% once you cross the 78,000 threshold.

So that's one of the big confusions or misconceptions that, oh, I'll get taxed on the whole income.

income at 30 or 33%.

And that's not the case.

Exactly.

Spot on.

Yes.

Yes, absolutely.

So there are expenses and ways to claim back tax if you're a salary earner.

There are three common expenses that you can claim.