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SCANZ constitution

Amendments to constitution - SGM - Sunday 18 January 2026

IRD has requested that we make some changes to our constitution to maintain our income tax deduction.

They have requested that we remove one clause:

1.6.3

"But SCANZ will not operate for the financial gain of members simply if SCANZ -

d. provides benefits to members or their families to alleviate hardship,"

We actually dispute its removal as it is provided for explicitly by s24 (1)(f) of the Incorporated Societies Act 2022. We suspect the IRD staff member who made the request was not aware of its origin.

Unfortunately, communicating with IRD appears to be a very slow process and we are running out of time, so this SGM will be to approve removing that clause so that we can avoid any tax issues while negotiation happens. Should further discussions with IRD result in our not requiring its removal before the meeting, we will not vote on it. If (more likely) the IRD discussion runs on past 18 January, we vote to remove it, allowing for its possible later addition again.

IRD have also requested that we re-add one of our previously entrenched clauses that we had removed under the transitional provisions for being redundant - all incorporated societies must be not for profit by law, so we had considered that our clause of 1.7.1: "Nothing in this constitution authorises SCANZ to do anything which contravenes or is inconsistent with the Act, any regulations made under the Act, or any other legislation." as covering the requirements for sDV8 of the Income Tax Act 2007.

However, IRD's internal policy requires us to add the following (we'll add it as 11.1.2 in Alterations to the constitution, and renumber subsequent rules):

"No addition to, deletion from or alteration of the organisation’s rules shall be made which would allow personal financial gain to any individuals. The provisions and effect of this clause shall not be removed from this document and shall be included and implied into any document replacing this document."

(sigh)

Updated 2025

SCANZ was required to update its rules of incorporation to bring them into line with the new legislation for incorporated societies.

The Act provided for us to entirely replace our rules with a new constitution in this situation, allowing us to remove entrenched clauses, that we otherwise couldn't change.

The Companies Office very helpfully produced a Constitution Builder to assist societies in creating compliant constitutions, and this was used to create this new constitution.

Information that was still relevant and lawful from our previous rules was included in this new constitution, but we had to make some changes to become compliant with the new legislation. You can see where all the changes have come from here

1. Introductory rules
2. Members
3. General meetings
4. Committee
5. Committee meetings
6. Officers
7. Records
8. Finances
9. Dispute resolution
10. Liquidation and removal from the register
11. Alterations to the constitution
12. Other

Official events

• Official events

Officerness

• Officers of Incorporated Societies - Who's an officer of the society (in the Inc Soc sense)
• Officer exclusions - Why can't someone have these two roles? Work in progress.