Melanie: first part-time job

Melanie is a good student, about to start college. She's been offered a job delivering advertising for a major supermarket chain around her neighbourhood.

Melanie's keen to find out how much she can earn to buy all the latest gear, but she's unsure what you're supposed to do when you get your first job and she isn't keen to talk directly to Inland Revenue just yet.

Melanie has a school computer available to her, and so when a school friend tells her to check out the What's Tax? website, Melanie quickly goes to the website and finds the section Your first job. She learns she needs an IRD number. Asking her mum, she discovers that to receive Working for Families Tax Credits payments, all children need an IRD number. So Melanie gets her IRD number from her mum.

At school the next day Melanie's back on What's Tax? to find out what else she needs to do. Melanie reads that, as a school student, if her total earnings are less than $45 a week, and/or her annual earnings are not expected to exceed $2,340, she won't have to complete a Tax code declaration (IR330) and her employer won't have to take tax from her income. But as Melanie will be earning $50 a week, she will have to pay tax and her employer should give her an IR330 form to fill in.

On her first day at work Melanie is given an IR330 but is told that only tax on schedular payments (formerly withholding tax) will be taken from her pay. Melanie doesn't know what this is, so she logs on to the glossary of What's Tax? where she learns what this tax is. She then links to the main Inland Revenue website www.ird.govt.nz where she finds that her tax code is "WT". Melanie completes and signs the IR330 form and gives it back to her employer.

What's Tax? also tells Melanie that as she's on schedular payments she'll need to send a completed Individual income tax return (IR3) to Inland Revenue. This return form gets posted out by Inland Revenue with a summary of earnings (SOE) showing what she earned and what tax on schedular payments was taken out and paid to Inland Revenue.

Melanie also learns that once she stops earning schedular payments she'll need to tell Inland Revenue so she doesn't have to complete any more IR3 returns.