How to Check if You Are Owed an IRD Tax Refund or Rebate

After each tax year ends on 31 March, Inland Revenue runs an automatic assessment. It either confirms you’re square, hands you a refund — or tells you that you owe.

Where to look: your myIR account

1. Log in to your myIR account (or register with your IRD number if you’ve never set one up).
2. Open the Income tax section and find your assessment for the relevant tax year.
3. Your assessment shows one of three outcomes: a refund due, tax to pay, or a nil result.
4. If a refund is due, check that your bank account on file is correct so it can be paid out.

Assessments for the year just ended are typically issued from late May onward, once Inland Revenue has all your income information from employers and banks.

The situations that almost always mean a refund

• You changed jobs mid-year, or had a gap between roles
• You were on the wrong tax code (especially a too-high secondary code)
• You earned between $24,000 and $48,000 and may qualify for the Independent Earner Tax Credit
• You donated to registered charities and never claimed the 33.33% donation rebate
• You only worked part of the year — study, travel, or arriving partway through

When it’s worth bringing in help

For a straightforward salary, the automatic assessment usually does the job. But the moment your situation has moving parts — multiple income sources, rental income, contracting alongside a salary, or several years that were never reviewed — the maths gets complicated fast, and mistakes are expensive.

This is where a registered tax agent or chartered accountant earns their fee: they can review past years, file missing returns, and surface credits you’d never spot yourself. A specialist tax refund service can check several years at once and is often paid only from what they recover. For anything beyond a single clean salary, an experienced accountant usually finds more than they cost.