Tax strategy playbooks / landscaper
$60k–$150k/yr · 5 strategies
Builders, electricians, plumbers, landscapers — trades businesses run on vehicles and tools. Those two categories alone contain some of the most accessible tax strategies for NZ sole traders, but ACC levies and home-office claims are regularly overlooked on top of them.
General information, not tax advice. Worked examples use fictional personas; figures are illustrative.
Dan runs his ute between jobs all over Christchurch, invoicing around $30k a year. Fuel, insurance and repairs were well past the point where the per-kilometre rate told the whole story.
He kept a logbook for 90 days, the IRD minimum, to establish his actual business-use percentage.
That percentage now applies to his real running costs, which for heavy business use can beat the kilometre rate. His accountant checked the switch made sense before he changed methods.
Illustrative example — not a real customer. Figures are based on your numbers and rounded.
PayWren finds this automatically: connect your invoices and expenses and the tax engine flags this strategy when it applies to your numbers, on the Solo plan.
Tama wires new builds around Hamilton and bought new test gear after 22 May 2025, each item over $1,000 excl-GST.
His accountant applied the Investment Boost, an extra 20% deduction in year one on top of normal depreciation, and confirmed each asset was new and qualified before filing.
That brought a fifth of the asset cost forward as a year-one deduction instead of waiting on the depreciation schedule.
Illustrative example — not a real customer. Figures are based on your numbers and rounded.
PayWren finds this automatically: connect your invoices and expenses and the tax engine flags this strategy when it applies to your numbers, on the Solo plan.
Ruth kitted out her Dunedin desk with a monitor and accessories, each under $1,000 excl-GST.
Instead of adding them to a depreciation schedule, she expensed each one immediately under the low-value asset write-off.
The full cost came off this year's income rather than trickling through as depreciation over several years.
Illustrative example — not a real customer. Figures are based on your numbers and rounded.
PayWren finds this automatically: connect your invoices and expenses and the tax engine flags this strategy when it applies to your numbers, on the Solo plan.
Mia writes from a spare room at home and invoices around $30k a year. She'd never claimed anything for the room itself.
She measured the office floor area once, put it in her tax profile, and used the IRD square-metre rate. No power bills or rates notices to keep.
For someone in Mia's position, the square-metre rate often turns a forgotten spare room into a meaningful annual deduction.
Illustrative example — not a real customer. Figures are based on your numbers and rounded.
PayWren finds this automatically: connect your invoices and expenses and the tax engine flags this strategy when it applies to your numbers, on the Solo plan.
Dan's landscaping profit has been steady at around $30k a year, and every winter ACC's invoice priced cover on whatever his last return said he earned.
He talked to ACC about CoverPlus Extra and agreed a level of cover that matches what his household would actually need if he were off the tools — not his best year's profit.
His levy now prices the agreed cover rather than last year's profit. The trade-off is real: lower cover means smaller weekly compensation if he's injured, so his adviser sanity-checked the number first.
Illustrative example — not a real customer. Figures are based on your numbers and rounded.
PayWren finds this automatically: connect your invoices and expenses and the tax engine flags this strategy when it applies to your numbers, on the Solo plan.
Connect your invoices and expenses and the tax engine flags which of these strategies apply to your specific numbers, no manual review required.
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