Franking is very basically where a company pays Australian tax...

Franking is very basically where a company pays Australian tax to the ATO before they pay the dividend to you then you get the credit for tax already paid to offset the tax you pay when you declare the AIZ dividends as personal income. Some people prefer 100% franked dividends as it minimises their personal tax bill. AIZ does not pay tax to the ATO however...

I tried to keep my first reply simple but at the risk of complicating things, AIZ will however withhold NZ tax as you are a non-resident, see below from their last dividend notice to the ASX.


You can read more about getting a foreign income tax offset here https://www.ato.gov.au/business/imputation/in-detail/trans-tasman-imputation-special-rules/ although an excerpt can be seen below:



Personally I obviously can't give you financial advice so you will have to do your own research. I bought in at $1.30 with a small holding of 5% of our portfolio. At the time, I considered the following:

PROS
- NZ government (largest holder) holds 52% of shares so unlikely to let it go under
- Major airline in NZ with near monopoly
- High customer ratings and reviews = quality product
- High potential future dividends
- Had DRP which I wanted
- Distressed price (due COVID-19) at 56% discount to their 52 week high.

CONS
- Unknown time/business impact from COVID-19
- Low margin, high cost industry.
- Personally I had a poor experience investing in VAH previously so I limited our risk with only a small investment.

Commsec only has one broker covering AIZ and their recommendation is 'hold'. Personally I am avoiding investing in anymore travel related stocks (AIA, SYD, QAN, FLT, WEB, CTD etc) as I think the market has already rebounded to a great extent. My disclosed sentiment is also 'hold' per below.

Anyway, best of luck as I said.