Tax refund guide

Quite a few people I've been talking to are interested in seeing if they have a tax refund. I'm not an advocate of the tax refund services that take a commission and trigger an IRD audit of your tax payments for the last 50 years, so I have decided to write a risk-free guide on how to see if you're owed a refund and how to collect it if you are.

Please note: If you follow my instructions you will not have to pay IRD if you find out that you owe them money.

Step 1: Find out your earnings

Firstly you need to find out your income for the year, either request a summary of earnings, use payslips from the year in question or sign up for IRD's secure online services. If you sign up for the online services you will need to ring them up after completing the forms to get your new account activated.

If you requested a summary of earnings it will take up to 10 working days (or 2 weeks) for the letter to arrive. If you're waiting for this then skip to the Step 2: Calculating your refund

Quick start for the Online services

If you have signed up to the online services you should then proceed to actually login to your account.

Once you are logged go to View and Confirm > Look at account information > INC - Income Tax > Earnings information

From here you can view your income and tax details as far back as 2004 (at least for me it was 2004).

Step 2: Calculate your refund

Ok so you have all of your income and tax details for the year that you want to find out about. Now you need to go here for the 2009 calculator or here for the 2008 calculator

If you want to work out your possible refund for a different year just search for "tax refund calculator" on the IRD website or browse this list.

Now you're on the Personal tax summary calculator for 200x page you can click Start and begin entering in the required information. Note that this does not submit any data to IRD and is completely anonymous.

Step 3: Request your refund

If the calculator showed that you owe IRD money don't panic! don't request a summary of tax and you will not have to pay a cent.

Now assuming the calculator showed that IRD owes you a refund, you can now request it!

All you need to do is go here and enter a few details. The IRD site says it can take up to 45 days, however after the end of the financial year it usually takes the standard 10 working days.

TLDR Version:

1. Summary of Earnings
2. Personal tax summary calculation for 2009 | Online services registration
3. Request a personal tax summary

Hopefully some of my faithful readers find this post helpful.