New Zealand’s Investment Boost is built into the depreciation engine and has been applied to eligible assets since our New Zealand support went live. This update is a closer look at how it works, because it is the part of the New Zealand regime most likely to be handled inconsistently by hand.
How it works in Dwindle
- 20% upfront, then normal depreciation. Flag an asset as eligible and Dwindle deducts 20% of its cost immediately, then depreciates the remaining 80% at the IRD prescribed rate over the rest of its life.
- Driven by the first-used date, not the acquisition date. Investment Boost applies from 22 May 2025, and eligibility is tested against the date the asset was first used. Record that date on the asset and the correct treatment follows from it, including for assets bought before the cutover and commissioned after it.
- Your tax book only. The boost is applied to books that follow jurisdiction rules. Your accounting book continues to depreciate the asset over its useful life on full cost, and the variance between the two is calculated for you.
- Correct GST basis. For a GST-registered entity, the 20% is calculated on the cost after the GST credit rather than the invoice total, so every subsequent year of depreciation starts from the right number.
- An alternative to the low-value write-off, not an addition to it. The two cannot both be claimed on one asset. Flag an asset for Investment Boost and the immediate write-off is no longer offered on it, so the election is recorded on the asset rather than decided again at return time.
Alongside the rest of the New Zealand regime
The IRD prescribed rate schedule is built in, searchable by industry or by asset type, on both diminishing value and straight line. Choosing a rate is a separate step from Investment Boost eligibility, and it turns on the acquisition date: Dwindle narrows the schedule to the rates relevant to when the asset was acquired, so you are picking from the right part of a large schedule rather than searching all of it. The low-value write-off threshold is applied by purchase date, including the temporary $5,000 window for assets purchased between 17 March 2020 and 16 March 2021.
Australian and New Zealand entities can sit in the same entity group, each on its own rules and income year: New Zealand monthly to a 31 March balance date, Australia daily to 30 June.
Getting started
Investment Boost is not an account setting you switch on, it is decided asset by asset. Flag the assets you are claiming it on, and record the first-used date wherever that differs from the acquisition date. The treatment follows from there.
If you are migrating an existing register, bulk import carries the first-used date with the rest of the asset data. Eligibility is not imported: assets arrive with Investment Boost switched off, as they do with the Australian car limit, so claiming it stays a deliberate decision on each asset rather than something inherited from a spreadsheet column.