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Imputation lets a company share the tax it has paid on its income with shareholders when it pays dividends.
Most New Zealand resident companies must keep an imputation credit account (ICA).
An ICA is a record-keeping account used to keep track of how much income tax the company has paid, and how many imputation credits it still holds that it can pass on to its shareholders.
How it works:
When a company pays income tax, it gains the same amount of imputation credits in its ICA.
When a company pays dividends to its shareholders, it can choose to attach some of its imputation credits to the dividends - it can impute the dividends. This creates a debit of the same amount in the ICA.
Some other credits and debits are entered in the ICA, including:
- residential land withholding tax (RLWT) deducted from the sale of residential property
- resident withholding tax (RWT) from interest or dividends the company has received.
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There are two Imputation Credit Account (ICA) notes available in Stat Reporter. These are:
| Report name | Description |
|---|---|
| Imputation Note NTD | a simple paragraph using NTD values to disclose the ICA balance this year and last year. |
| Imputation Note Detailed | a detailed analysis of Opening Balance plus and minus movements to derive the closing balance |
By default, the NTD version is selected at Practice Level and the more detailed version is not selected, meaning it will not show in the list of available reports for a client. This can be changed at Practice level or for individual clients.
Detailed Imputation note
The detailed Imputation Note uses a specific account group in the Other financial accounts section.
For an AO Classic general ledger chart of the accounts, the mapping is:
- 996//80 is the Opening Balance of the ICA brought forward from last year.
- 996/81-996/89 is a range of accounts to cover other movements in the ICA, the most common of being Imputation Credits attached to Dividends paid.Note the mapping for a standard AO Classic chart.
- 631/02-631/05 are the various accounts used to capture tax paid during the year.
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Imputation credits attached to Dividends paid
Imputation credits attached to Dividends received
There are two ways to handle imputation credits on dividends received:

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