NZ Super rates
Eligibility
New Zealand residents are entitled to receive NZ Super (the old age pension) if they satisfy all of the following conditions. They must:
- have reached State pension age (currently age 65);
- be a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident;
- live in New Zealand;
- have lived in New Zealand for at least 10 years since age 20;
- have lived in New Zealand for at least 5 years since age 50. The benefit is linked directly to the national average wage and is reviewed each year (1 April). The current level is 66% of the net national average wage.There are no income or asset tests applied to NZ Super. However, if one partner of a couple qualifies and the other does not, both may receive the benefit, but an income test applies in respect of the benefit paid to the partner that does not qualify in their own right.
- New Zealand Superannuation rates – from 1 April 2016
- However, entitlements to an overseas social security pension (like the UK’s Basic State Pension) but not work-related, employer-provided pensions, reduce the New Zealand pension by the equivalent amount.
- The pension is taxed as income in the normal way under the PAYE system.
- Benefit
- Residence in a country with which New Zealand has reciprocal social security arrangements (like Australia and the UK) counts as residence in New Zealand.
| Before tax (gross) | Post-tax (net) | |||
| a year | a week | a year | a week | |
| Single, living alone | $23,058.36 | $443.43 | $20,007.52 | $384.76 |
| Single, sharing | $21,191.56 | $407.53 | $18,468.32 | $355.16 |
| Married person (each) | $17,458.48 | $335.74 | $15,390.44 | $295.97 |
| Married couple | $34,916.96 | $671.48 | $30,780.88 | $591.94 |
The next change is due 1 April 2017.
Posted Alec Waugh
To see these increased rates heightens such a sense of betrayal and unfairness surrounding the unfair anomalies attached to the deduction of overseas pensions.
It is a total disgrace that this state of affairs is allowed to continue thus robbing those people of their overseas pensions they have earned along with their employer. Right now the NZ Government is lining it’s koffers with a third of a billion dollars annually off NZS recipients which rightfully belongs to us.
Some nationalities who do not have the provisions of Section 70 applied to them will be very happy about the new rates.
Even more so will be those who fulfill the 10 year residency requirements, but have never worked in NZ, nor paid taxes.
What an insult again it is to those of us who have, and many years at that only to not to receive a cent of what is rightfully theirs’,