Programme overview
The Active Investor Plus visa is New Zealand’s modernised replacement for the Investor 1 / Investor 2 categories that lapsed in 2022. The 2025 relaunch — effective 1 April 2025 — was a deliberate reset by the Coalition Government to attract serious capital. Three changes are doing the heavy lifting: minimum thresholds were cut from NZD 15 million to NZD 5 million (Growth) and NZD 10 million (Balanced); the asset universe broadened materially in the Balanced category to include bonds, listed equities, property developments, and philanthropy; and the time-in-NZ requirement was reduced to among the lightest in the OECD — 21 days over three years for Growth investors.
The redesign worked. Within nine months of relaunch, Immigration New Zealand recorded approximately NZD 3.39 billion in committed capital under the visa. Three features keep our enthusiasm calibrated: the Growth category is illiquid and genuinely risk-bearing — it is designed to fund New Zealand businesses, not park capital safely; the Balanced category requires five years invested, longer than Singapore GIP’s renewal cycle; and the New Zealand tax residence trap has serious teeth once the four-year transitional resident period expires.
Investment routes
Growth Category — NZD 5,000,000 · 3 years. Higher-risk pathway: managed funds and direct investments in New Zealand businesses. Investments must be Invest NZ-accepted, typically illiquid, structured to channel patient capital into operating NZ companies. Minimum 21 days in New Zealand over the three-year investment period — a meaningful headline number. Suited to principals with active business interests or appetite for NZ growth-equity exposure.
Balanced Category — NZD 10,000,000 · 5 years. Wider asset universe: managed funds, direct investments, listed equities (NZX), philanthropy to qualifying NZ charities, NZ government and corporate bonds, and property developments. Property qualifies if it is a new residential, commercial, or industrial development, or an existing commercial / industrial property — existing residential property does not qualify. Minimum 105 days in NZ over the five-year period (≈ 21/year), reducible by 14 days for every additional NZD 1 million committed to Growth-category assets, up to a 42-day reduction.
Hybrid stacking. A principal who commits NZD 5M Growth + NZD 5M Balanced sits under the Balanced rules but with a reduced presence requirement and broader liquidity profile. We frequently model this for clients who want optionality across the two pots.
Beyond the capital itself, applicants must satisfy character (police certificates for any country of citizenship and for any country of 12+ month residence in the past 10 years), health (medical exam, chest X-ray), and provide evidence of source of funds. The application fee from NZD 27,470. There is no formal English-language test imposed at the visa stage, but documentation is in English and the residency substance test rewards integration.
Tax architecture
New Zealand has no general capital gains tax, no inheritance tax, no gift tax, and no wealth tax. Personal income tax is progressive 10.5% to 39% on worldwide income for tax residents. Corporate rate 28%.
The headline planning instrument is the Transitional Tax Resident exemption: new arrivals who become NZ tax residents for the first time (or after 10+ years abroad) are exempt from NZ tax on most foreign-source income — foreign dividends, interest, royalties, foreign trust distributions, and most foreign business income — for 48 months from arrival. Foreign employment income remains taxable. This is a genuinely powerful four-year window that defines the planning calendar for Active Investor Plus principals.
After the four years, the Foreign Investment Fund (FIF) regime kicks in for non-Australian offshore portfolios: deemed-rate or fair-dividend-rate taxation of foreign equity holdings above NZD 50,000. Many clients restructure offshore portfolios pre-arrival, or run the four-year window as the realisation/restructuring period.
GST is 15%. Trust taxation has tightened — the trust rate is 39% from April 2024 — which has dampened the historical use of foreign trusts as NZ-sheltered vehicles.
What it gets you
A New Zealand resident visa with travel conditions valid for the duration of the investment period. After meeting investment + presence conditions, eligibility for a Permanent Resident Visa — indefinite right to live, work, and study in New Zealand, with travel rights that never expire (subject to character).
NZ citizenship requires five years of residency with at least 240 days per year of physical presence — meaningful, but achievable on the Balanced category for families that genuinely relocate. NZ permits dual citizenship, and the NZ passport is a top-10 global passport (Henley) with visa-free Schengen, UK, US (via ESTA), Japan, and the trans-Tasman arrangement that lets New Zealanders live and work in Australia indefinitely.
Family inclusion: partner with 12+ months cohabitation, dependent children up to age 24 (with financial dependency evidence for those 21-24). No formal English requirement at the visa stage.
Our role on a New Zealand file
Active Invest Plus files require pre-arrival tax-structuring counsel as much as immigration counsel — the four-year transitional window is unusually generous and unusually unforgiving if mis-set. Our work runs in two parallel streams: source-of- funds documentation and Invest NZ-accepted investment selection (Growth managers, Balanced fund mandates, qualifying property developments) on the immigration side; pre-arrival entity restructuring, FIF positioning, and CGT-equivalent planning on the tax side. Most files clear approval in principle within 90 days; substantive fund deployment then runs to a contractual schedule, and the residency arc to PR follows the investment-period clock — three years for Growth, five for Balanced.