ACC classification units

Every business paying an ACC Work Account levy is put in one classification unit, and that unit sets the rate. ACC publishes 537 of them for 2026-27, mapped from 2,804 Business Industry Classification codes — the code chosen once at registration, usually in a hurry, and rarely looked at again.

The 30 units below are the ones where being in the wrong unit is both most common and most expensive: trades that became design desks, manufacturers that became importers, and the office-and-site splits in between. Each page carries the 2026-27 rate, the rate history, every BIC code that lands on the unit, and written notes on the units it gets mistaken for.

How a unit gets assigned

ACC classifies on what a business actually does, not on what it is called or what it once did. Where a business has more than one activity, the levy generally follows the highest-rated of them unless the activities are separately accounted for. Two things are worth knowing before anything else: the code lives at both ACC and IRD, and fixing one alone does not stick, and a formal levy review has a three-month clock that cannot be extended.

Construction

Administrative and Support services

Manufacturing

Professional, Scientific and Technical Services

Transport, Postal and Warehousing

Wholesale Trade

Rates are per $100 of liable earnings and GST-exclusive, as ACC publishes them. The gap column is the difference between a unit's rate and the rate of the unit furthest from it among those it is commonly confused with — it measures what the distinction is worth, not what anybody's correct unit is.

Related guides

• How ACC classification units work
• Changing your BIC code — both places, or it doesn't stick
• The ACC4618 form, box by box
• The three-month review deadline
• What the ACC levy check actually does

Source: ACC Levy Guidebook 2026-27. Extracted 2026-08-06.