What is investment cost?

Investment cost is the cost price you paid for your investments

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Written by Support
Updated over a week ago

Your investment cost is the ‘cost value’ of your investments, sometimes called ‘cost basis’. It’s how much you paid for the shares in your portfolio – not their current value. With Hatch, your investment cost includes your available balance because it‘s stored in a Money market Fund.

From 2022, you'll be able to find your estimated investment cost for your Hatch investments in your annual Tax Reports. This will indicate if you’ve gone above the $50,000 NZD FIF threshold for your Hatch investments at any point during the tax year.

Why do I need to know my investment cost?

When you buy a slice of an overseas company or ETF (exchange traded fund) it means that you’ve bought into a ‘Foreign Investment Fund’ or a FIF. If the total amount you’ve invested in shares of FIFs is $50,000 NZD or more, then a special set of tax rules, the FIF rules, apply. Some Australian listed shares are exempt from these rules.

The FIF rules become important at tax time because they determine the way income from your overseas investments is taxed. The rules are essentially equations that calculate how much income you earn from your overseas investments (not the amount of tax you have to pay). See what you might need to do at tax time.

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