ACC cover options: CoverPlus or CoverPlus Extra?

Every self-employed person in New Zealand has ACC cover from the day they start; the choice isn't whether, it's which shape. The default (CoverPlus) is calculated off your filed income; the optional upgrade (CoverPlus Extra) is a pre-agreed amount. For contractors with steady, established income the default is usually fine; for anyone whose taxable income understates what they'd need after an injury, the upgrade exists for exactly that gap. This guide is the decision.

CoverPlus: the automatic default

CoverPlus starts automatically with self-employment. If an injury stops you working, it pays weekly compensation of up to 80% of your taxable income from the most recently completed financial year, and its levy arrives on the in-arrears cycle covered in the hub guide. Two properties matter:

• It follows your filed income. Good year last year, good cover this year; but a first-year contractor, a deduction-heavy year, or a deliberately low taxable income all shrink the payout the same way they shrink the tax bill.
• The claim requires proving that income, which for a newly self-employed person with no filed return yet can make the safety net thinner than expected exactly when it's newest.

CoverPlus Extra: the agreed amount

CoverPlus Extra flips the model: you agree a level of cover with ACC in advance, and if you can't work, it pays 100% of that agreed amount (before tax), with no income-proving exercise at claim time. You apply for it ( self-employed people and shareholder-employees who aren't on PAYE are eligible), ACC sets minimum and maximum limits on what you can agree, and your levy is calculated on the agreed amount rather than your filed income.

The situations it's built for:

• Income that swings. If last year was lean, CoverPlus would pay 80% of lean; an agreed amount holds steady.
• New contractors without a filed self-employed year behind them.
• Deduction-heavy filers whose taxable income is genuinely lower than what their household needs in a bad year.
• Certainty itself:knowing the exact weekly number in advance is worth something when you're the only earner.

Choosing, honestly

The comparison is a premium question: CoverPlus Extra at a higher agreed level costs a correspondingly higher levy, and agreeing a LOWER amount than your income can also cut the levy for people who'd rather self-insure some of the risk. Run the numbers on ACC's own estimator with your real figures, and put the result next to what income protection insurance would cost for the same certainty; they solve overlapping problems and are usually evaluated together.

How Coffer helps

Whichever cover you hold, the levy invoice arrives in arrears, and Coffer's job is making sure it's a non-event: the ACC set-aside accrues from every paid invoice, the help article covers entering your actual invoice when it lands, and the dashboard keeps the ACC year separate from your GST and income tax so one bill never raids another.