Setting and administering fees and levies for cost recovery

We’ve updated our guidance on setting and administering fees and levies for cost recovery. This guide will be useful for any public organisation that has legal authority to charge a fee or levy for the goods or services that it provides. It is an update on the guide we published in 2008, and has been expanded to cover some levies as well as fees.

It also updates the principles that public organisations should consider when making any decisions on setting and administering fees and levies: equity, efficiency, justifiability, and transparency. These principles apply equally to fees and levies. We have updated them to recognise changes in public expectations, particularly around transparency and engagement. Whether you are setting a new charge or reviewing an existing one, these principles should guide your decision-making.

This guide also sets out the matters that we expect public organisations to consider when calculating the costs of producing goods or providing services and setting charges to recover those costs.

Our guidance complements the guides produced by the Treasury and Taituarā – Local Government Professionals Aotearoa. Those guides provide further support and information, particularly on the policy processes that precede any decision on whether to charge for producing a good or providing a service and the amount of that charge.

A two-page summary and epub are also available for this good practice guide.

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