IRD requirements for businesses paying PAYE half-monthly

ANSWER ID:2450

If your business pays more than $500,000 of PAYE and ESCT annually, Inland Revenue considers you a large employer. This means you must pay your PAYE half-monthly and send your Employer Monthly Schedule IR348 (EMS) electronically every month.

The basic process for large employers is:

pay PAYE to Inland Revenue on the 15th and end of month, and
electronically file the EMS using ir-File at the end of every month.

Employers with gross annual PAYE of $100,000 or more must still file their EMS electronically using ir-File.

For more information about ir-Filing visit the Inland Revenue website.

Change PAYE Period (done half-monthly for large employers)

After you have finalised the pay, you may want to set the system up for the next pay. You can use the Change PAYE Period button to update from the Current PAYE Period to the next (or previous if necessary).

The current PAYE period is shown on the Enter Pays main screen. If the pay end date entered is outside of the current PAYE period, you will be prompted to update the PAYE period.

As part of the finalising pays process the Pay Summary is printed, it shows the total amount of PAYE paid. If the pay is fortnightly this is the figure paid to the IRD.

Before filing the EMS make sure the last PAYE period for the month has been updated.

Employer Monthly Schedule IR348

This contains all the start/finish, Child Support, Student Loan, KiwiSaver and the earnings details of all employees for the chosen month.

This prints automatically when a PAYE period is updated to a new month but is also available from the Reports menu.

Ways the EMS can be sent to the IRD electronically

The EMS is transferred electronically to the IRD by sending a CSV file which can be created when this report is printed.

When you update the PAYE period, the EMS wizard appears.

Select the month for the EMS.
Choose the format IRD Approved format.
Select the option to create a CSV file.
Finish the report.

The created CSV files are stored in your ir-File outbox, specified in Tools > Options. When logging into ir-File from the Inland Revenue website, the directory for the outbox is C:\Ir-Outbox.

Ways the EMS can be sent to the IRD manually (not available for large employers)

When you update the PAYE period, the EMS wizard appears.

Select the month for the EMS.
Choose to create a Summary report.
Finish the report.

For information on manually filing the EMS to Inland Revenue, visit the Inland Revenue website.