CHARITABLE TRUSTS - DID YOU KNOW THESE BUSINESSES ARE ACTUALLY CHARITIES... AND EXEMPT FROM TAXES

I asked Chat GPT to analyse non (or low) paying tax Charitable Companies in New Zealand — here is its ranked list of large NZ charity-linked groups and iwi trusts that sit in structures with income-tax exemption or charity-linked tax advantages.

Two important caveats before the table.First, this does not prove each group paid “zero tax” in total; many still pay GST, PAYE and other taxes. The issue is mainly income tax treatment. Registered charities are generally exempt from income tax, and charity-owned business income can also be exempt where the rules are met.

Second, iwi groups are often mixed structures: a charitable or tribal trust at the top, with some taxable commercial subsidiaries underneath. So they are not all directly comparable to a pure charity like St John or IHC.

Largest verified charity-linked groups and Iwi trusts in New Zealand

Biggest takeaway

The headline is that New Zealand’s charity-linked tax issue is not mainly about small volunteer groups. At the top end it involves very large organisations with annual income in the tens or hundreds of millions, and in some cases asset bases well above $1 billion. That is true for mainstream charities, church-linked organisations, and some iwi trust structures.

 

Important names that are also relevant

A few other names are clearly part of the debate, but I did not include them in the ranked table because I did not have equally clean, comparable current figures in front of me:

§ Large Catholic and Anglican diocesan groups — some have very substantial assets, but current figures are harder to compare cleanly across diocesan and parish structures. One example: the Roman Catholic Diocese of Auckland’s 2025 annual report snippet refers to a $32.96m consolidated surplus.

This is no longer a debate about raffles, op shops and church cake stalls. At the top end, NZ’s charity regime now covers some very large organisations with serious revenue, major property portfolios and, in a few cases, billion-dollar balance sheets. Some are plainly charitable in function. Some are iwi structures with mixed commercial and charitable arms. Some operate in markets where fully taxable private firms also compete. That does not mean the exemption is wrong. But it does mean the question of competitive neutrality is now unavoidable.

If everyone running a commercial business paid their fair share of tax,

then all taxpayers could pay much less tax.