Plain language law

New Zealand law explained for everyone

Social Security Act 2018

Other provisions - Regulations

422: Regulations: income exemptions

You could also call this:

“Rules about what money counts when working out your benefit payments”

The government can make rules about what counts as income when deciding how much money you get from benefits. These rules can say that some money you get doesn’t count as income.

The government can let MSD (the people who manage benefits) do some special things when they work out your benefit:

  1. They can ignore some of your income for a while, up to a certain amount.
  2. If you have a severe disability, they can ignore some or all of the money you earn by working.
  3. They can ignore money you get if you lose your job (redundancy) or retire.

These rules can start working on any date the government chooses. This date could be before, on the same day, or after the day the rules are made.

When the government makes these rules, they have to follow certain steps to make them official and let people know about them.

This text is automatically generated. It might be out of date or be missing some parts. Find out more about how we do this.

This page was last updated on

View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM6783992.

Topics:
Money and consumer rights > Banking and loans
Work and jobs > Worker rights
Government and voting > Government departments
Previous

421: Regulations: residential requirement, or

“Rules about who can get help from social security based on where they live”

Next

423: Regulations: accommodation supplement, or

“Rules for getting help with housing costs”

Part 8 Other provisions
Regulations

422Regulations: income exemptions

  1. The Governor-General may, by Order in Council, make regulations for the purposes of clause 9 of Schedule 3 (exclusion of amounts, items, payments, or income from specified source, declared not to be income).

  2. Regulations made under subsection (1) may (without limitation) authorise MSD,—

  3. in calculating the rate of benefit, to take no account of specified income for a specified period and that is up to, in total, a specified maximum amount:
    1. in calculating the rate of benefit, to disregard all or part of the income of a severely disabled person derived from personal effort:
      1. in calculating the income of a person for the purpose of determining the rate of benefit, to take no account of a redundancy or retirement payment.

        1. Regulations made under subsection (1) have effect in respect of any income specified in the regulations on and after a date—

        2. specified in the regulations; and
          1. earlier than, the same as, or later than, the date on which the regulations are made.

            1. Regulations under this section are secondary legislation (see Part 3 of the Legislation Act 2019 for publication requirements).

            Compare
            Notes
            • Section 422(4): inserted, on , by section 3 of the Secondary Legislation Act 2021 (2021 No 7).