Question about New Zealand tax/finance

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Forums › Finance and wealth management › Question about New Zealand tax/finance

librax

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#175510 2-Jul-2015 10:20

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Hi guys,

I was looking for an active NZ forum and this seemed like a great community.

I have a rather isolated situation on NZ finance.

I am not from NZ, I am a Sri Lankan. I have a friend who works in NZ.

My question is this; I make money freelancing online but I cannot receive Paypal funds to SL
so my friend receives it on his NZ Paypal and then transfers it to me.

What are the implications for my friend from a tax perspective (or in any other manner)?

Is there any issue for him if I transfer funds this way on a regular basis.

Thanks for taking the time to read my issue, your assistance will be much appreciated.

Regards,
L

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jpoc

1043 posts

Uber Geek

#1335774 2-Jul-2015 14:14

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What you are talking about is called money laundering and that is a crime here in New Zealand and in most other countries in the world.

I fully understand that you may associate money laundering with organised crime, drug dealing, terrorism etc and that you may be earning this money legally and that you may be paying all required taxes but that does not get around the fact that this is money laundering.

If a bank in NZ sees an unusual transaction for a sum of more that $NZ10,000 then they are required by law to report that to the authorities as potential money laundering.

You are now reading this and thinking that you are OK as no single amount is over $NZ4,000.

Wrong. You need to read the wikiP page on structuring. [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring]

The transfers that you are proposing will be detected as an attempt at structuring and the bank must also report this to the authorities. You can rely on that happening, the law says that banks must report it and they can be fined a lot of money if they do not so they are sure to report.

Structuring itself is a crime. Even if all money involved is legit and all taxes are being paid, your friend would be guilty of structuring and could be prosecuted.

If prosecuted, there would be no defence available to him. The best that he could hope for would be to claim that no harm had been done, all taxes had been paid and the money was all clean and legal. That might get him a lighter punishment or even a discharge without conviction but it would still be a nasty process to go through.

He could also be done for tax evasion if the IRD decided that it was his money and that he was trying to hide it away in another country. In that case, the onus of proof would not be on the IRD to show that it was your friend's money. If would be up to your friend to prove in a New Zealand court that it was your money all along and that you were paying all due taxes in other countries.

I expect that most people who read this will be outraged about the fact that this would be considered to be money laundering and that the law around structuring is as rigid as it is but that is the law that our government has signed up to.

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