Annual cost once every dated change has landed
$9,736 to $62,712
$9,736 to $62,712 a year, once it has all landed.
5 dated rule changes, five of them priced against this business. The next one lands in 7 months.
$5,060 of that is enacted law with the rate already set — 19% of the middle estimate. The rest is announced policy or an annual review, which you should plan for and should not put in a budget.
Budgetable$5,060enacted, rate set in legislation
Plan for it$21,399announced or reviewed annually — do not bank it
When it lands
Each change on the date it takes effect, sized by what it costs a year. The stepped line is the running total: the annual cost this business carries once everything up to that point has arrived.
enacted — rate set in lawannounced — rate not setannual review — date certain, amount notrunning annual total
Bars are the middle of each estimate. The two ends of the range are on the cards below, with what each one was worked out from.
Every rule, and what it does to you
1 Apr 2027in 7 months
annual reviewpayroll
Minimum wage review, 1 April 2027
$6,469 to $30,619 a year
9 staff on or near $23.95 an hour is about $431,250 of wages at the bottom of the scale. A 1.9% to 6.5% increase is $8,194 to $28,031.
The adult minimum wage is reviewed every year and announced around December for the following April. It has not been skipped. The date is certain and the number is not, so this is a band rather than a figure — recent increases have run from under 2% to over 7%.
What you can do about itRelativity is the hidden half. Lifting the floor compresses everybody just above it, and the people who ask for a raise in May are the ones who were a dollar clear in March.
date certain, amount not · Employment New Zealand — minimum wage
1 Jul 2027in 10 months
announcedfleet
Road user charges replace petrol tax
−$117 to $309 a year
28000 km of petrol driving at 8.4 L/100km pays $1,894 of excise today. A distance charge on the same distance is $2,128 at today's $76 rate, plus $75 of licence fees. The switch is neutral at 9.44 L/100km.
Every light vehicle moves off petrol excise and onto a distance charge, the way diesels and EVs already pay. Everyone assumes an economical car wins. It is the other way round: the pump charges you by what you burn and a distance charge does not, so the switch takes money off efficient vehicles.
What you can do about itLicence fees are per licence, not per kilometre — buying the year in one block instead of 1,000 km at a time is the whole fee, and it is the only part of this bill you choose. The rest is a replacement-cycle question: the road-tax saving on a thriftier vehicle disappears.
rate not set · Beehive — replacing petrol tax with electronic road user charges · modelled properly in RUC Switch
1 Apr 2028in 1.6 years
enactedpayroll
KiwiSaver employer contribution rises to 4%
$4,312 to $5,750 a year
0.5% of a $1,150,000 wage bill is $5,750 if every employee is in at the default rate. Between three quarters and all of them usually are.
The default employee rate and the compulsory employer match both step from 3.5% to 4% of before-tax pay. The employer half is not optional and lands on the whole wage bill at once, which makes it the broadest of these — it does not care what industry you are in or how your rosters work.
What you can do about itNone on the rate — it is compulsory. The only thing that moves is when you tell people, because a pay round negotiated before April 2028 that ignores this is a pay round you fund twice.
rate set in legislation · Inland Revenue — KiwiSaver changes
6 Aug 2028in 1.9 years
enactedpayroll
Employment Leave Act replaces the Holidays Act
−$1,816 to $21,735 a year
4.5 points on $483,000 of casual and additional wages is $21,735. Against that, the single-rate rule and hours-based sick leave give back an estimated $17,445.
Casual and additional hours stop attracting 8% holiday pay and start attracting a 12.5% leave compensation payment. Everybody quotes that 4.5 point gap as though it were the whole answer. Two other changes run the other way: annual leave is paid at one rate instead of the greater of two, and sick leave is counted in hours instead of days.
What you can do about itThe casual share is the whole line. Hours inside an agreed pattern accrue leave at 7.69%; the same hours outside one are bought out at 12.5%. Work that is genuinely regular is cheaper written into the agreement.
rate set in legislation · MBIE — Holidays Act reform · modelled properly in LeaveShift
6 Aug 2029in 2.9 years
enactedpayroll
Employment agreements must be compliant
$888 to $4,300 a year
A reviewed template plus a variation for each of 24 staff. One-off, in the year it falls.
A year after the Employment Leave Act commences, every employment agreement has to match it. This is not a rate change and it is not free: it is a legal review and a variation for every employee on the books, and the firms that do this work are the same firms doing it for everybody else in the same window.
What you can do about itTiming. Everybody in the country needs the same review in the same twelve months, and employment lawyers are not elastic. The quote in 2028 is not the quote in mid-2029.
rate set in legislation · MBIE — Holidays Act reform