Tax and fees

Tax

Tax on your member contributions

Member contributions are calculated on your before-tax salary but deducted from your after-tax income. This means member contributions are deducted from your pay after tax.

Tax on your employer contributions

Contribution tax is deducted from employer contributions before they are credited to your account. The amount of tax varies depending on the total amount of:

• your taxable income in the prior tax year (or an estimate of your income if you have worked for less than a year), and
• the employer contributions (including tax deducted) you received in the prior tax year.

Contribution tax rates

Total income plus employer contributions	Tax rate %
Up to $16,800	10.5
Between $16,801 and $57,600	17.5
Between $57,601 and $84,000	30.0
Over $84,001	33.0

Fees

The return you get from an investment is only one side of the equation. The other, of course, is cost. We monitor UniSaver’s costs and expenses closely. The size of the scheme means we can negotiate very competitive investment management fees with our investment manager and the fees associated with other service providers. Fixed costs are shared among approximately 9,000 members, which also helps keep them low on a per member basis.

This graph shows the total fees for $100,000 invested in UniSaver's three main funds against the average for KiwiSaver schemes with a similar mix of assets included a survey by Morningstar - an independent company that monitors fund performance, including fees.

Investment management fees

Investment management fees are deducted from investment returns before they are applied to your accounts. They include the costs charged by Russell Investment Group Limited for acting as UniSaver’s investment consultant and investment manager. Fees are also charged by the managers of the underlying funds in which the investments are made.

Administration fees

Administration fees meet the cost of running the scheme. They cover a range of professional services, such as investment, audit and legal advice, as well as the cost of providing member services. This includes things like maintaining member and general scheme records, operating the member helpdesk and website and reporting to and communicating with members.

Administration costs are generally allocated to the Reserve Fund before we allocate interest to member standard and employer standard accounts. On occasion, the employers may agree to pay these expenses in addition to their contributions.

If there is insufficient money in the Reserve Fund to pay the expenses, they will be paid first from employer standard accounts (including, in the case of a locked member but subject to the complying fund rules, the employer locked account) and then from member standard accounts (including, in the case of a locked member but subject to the complying fund rules, the member locked account).

Service fees

We charge the following service fees to your account:

• A fee of $50 for the second and any subsequent investment choice elections you make in each calendar year (the first election is currently free of charge).
• A first-home withdrawal fee of $199.19.
• An administration fee of $4.36 per month for deferred members.
• A fee of $39.66 for second and subsequent withdrawals by a deferred member in any calendar year (the first withdrawal is currently free of charge).
• A one-off establishment fee of $80.74 for setting up a regular withdrawal facility by a deferred member
• A termination fee of $39.66 for deferred members closing their account.

These service fees were updated on 8 January 2018.

Any amounts deducted from your accounts are shown on the annual account statement we send you each year. 

Find out more

You’ll find detailed information about the fees charged by our service providers at www.companiesoffice.govt.nz/disclose.