What is an ACC number?
Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) is a form of insurance that the New Zealand Government has implemented which looks after all New Zealand residents.
When you submit your first tax return, Inland Revenue sends the information through to ACC who set up an account and send you an invoice based on your earnings. You will receive an invoice every year you are in business. Businesses receive two invoices, one for shareholders and one for employers. These are calculated based on profit from shares and margin of the return amount you filed.
Your ACC levy rate is charged based on the type of work you do because some industries are more high-risk than others. A flight instructor, for example, will have a higher levy rate than a bookkeeper. When Inland Revenue passes your details to ACC, they include the Business Industry Classification (BIC) code from your tax return or GST registration.
ACC uses this BIC code to assign you a classification unit (CU). This is the code that best describes your business activity and determines how much in ACC levies you are required to pay. If ACC doesn’t know what you do for a job then this code will be defaulted to a Manufacturing code which attracts the highest levy rate.
Paying too high a rate with ACC is one of the most common mistakes we see self-employed individuals make, and it’s usually because ACC assigned them the default Manufacturing code.