Full source list for How do I register a company in NZ — and what do the decisions inside the form actually mean?
Six numbered references for /wayfinder/refs/registering-a-company:
1. Incorporation fee: $118.74 + GST. Name reservation fee: $10 + GST. Total: $128.74 + GST. Fees current as at the Companies Register schedule, last confirmed against published Companies Office guidance (May 2026).
2. The 20-working-day consent-form deadline runs from name reservation, not from application submission. If consent forms are not signed and returned within that window, the registration is cancelled and fees are not refunded.
3. Limited liability companies are the most common company type in NZ and the default for SMBs. Other types — co-operative, unlimited, overseas — exist for specific use cases and are covered separately on the Companies Register.
4. Director residency: section 10 of the Companies Act 1993 requires every NZ company to have at least one director who lives in NZ, or who lives in Australia and is also a director of a company registered in Australia.
5. Constitution: Companies Act 1993, sections 26–32. A company may adopt a constitution to modify or extend the Act's default rules. Without one, the Act's default rules apply automatically. The standard rules embedded in the Act are sufficient for most sole-director-sole-shareholder SMBs at incorporation.
6. BIC (Business Industry Classification) codes are maintained by Stats NZ and used across government for industry-statistics, ACC levy classification, and regulatory categorisation. The Companies Register links to the BIC code lookup tool during the incorporation form.