New Zealand's population is 5.1 million. So why did the tax system just process 32.7 million people in 2024?

The answer: you're being counted multiple times. Every time you file a tax return, every time your employer sends PAYE data, every time you declare investment income or rental earnings, you show up as another entry in Stats NZ's taxable income data. (Source: Stats NZ, taxable-income-sources)

Here's where it gets interesting. In 2020, that figure was 30.4 million. By 2024, it hit 32.7 million. That's 2.3 million additional tax entries in just four years, even as New Zealand's actual population grew by less than 200,000.

The gap between those numbers tells a story about how Kiwis earn money now versus four years ago. You're not just working one job anymore. You're juggling side hustles, rental properties, freelance gigs, investment income. Each income stream creates another data point in the system.

Between 2020 and 2021, something strange happened. The count actually dropped by 37,000 entries. That was COVID. Businesses closed. Jobs disappeared. People stopped declaring rental income when tenants couldn't pay. The tax system saw fewer sources of income, not more.

Then 2022 hit. The count jumped by 380,000 in a single year. That's the economy roaring back to life, but it's also the cost-of-living squeeze forcing people to find extra income wherever they could. Your Uber driver probably has a day job. Your Airbnb host is likely paying off a mortgage on their own home.

By 2023, the count surged again: up nearly a million entries in one year. That's not normal. That's Kiwis scrambling to keep up with inflation by any means necessary.

The 2024 figure, 32.7 million, works out to roughly 6.4 tax entries per person in New Zealand. Some of those are kids with savings accounts earning interest. Some are retirees with pensions and part-time work. But a lot of them are working-age Kiwis who've realised one income source isn't enough anymore.

This isn't about tax avoidance or people gaming the system. It's about economic survival. When your grocery bill climbs by hundreds of dollars a year and your mortgage rate doubles, you find another way to earn. The tax data doesn't lie: more Kiwis are cobbling together income from more places than ever before.

The question nobody's asking: what happens when the side hustles dry up?