Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) is alerting lawyers and conveyancers to the 1 April 2016 expiry of the contract date exemption for Land Transfer Tax statements.

Under the Land Transfer Amendment Act 2015, sellers and buyers do not need to provide tax information if the contract date for the transfer of the land was entered into  before 1 October 2015 and if the transfer is registered on or before 1 April 2016.

LINZ says for dealings submitted after Friday 1 April 2016, this means:

• You can't claim a contract or settlement date exemption on a tax statement if you're lodging it for the first time. In these cases, the submission will fail and you'll receive an error message. The tax statement record(s) will need to be updated with valid tax information before it can be lodged.
• You can claim a contract or settlement date exemption if the dealing was originally lodged prior to 2 April 2016 and has been requisitioned. In these cases it will be accepted when resubmitted.
• You can't claim a contract or settlement date exemption if the dealing was previously rejected, withdrawn or refused. In these cases re-submission will be considered as its first lodgement.

LINZ says dealings submitted  before 1 April 2016 will be accepted regardless of whether the registration is completed by LINZ after 1 April 2016.