TMNZ: The ultimate cashflow flexibility tool for your business
In tough economic times, it can be hard for businesses to stay on top of cashflow and juggle their tax liabilities. For companies and sole traders dealing with fluctuating cashflow and provisional tax headaches, there’s an easier way to manage your obligations—tax pooling.
Did you know TMNZ’s tax pool can help you manage your tax by matching your cashflow forecasts with your provisional tax payments? And you can use tax pool deposits as an alternative funding source when cashflow is tight.
How we can help
TMNZ is an Inland Revenue (IR)-approved tax pooling provider, meaning you can use us to pay income tax on your behalf at a time that suits you. We offer greater flexibility over how and when you pay provisional tax.
First, you’ll need to think about your cashflow forecast. If you’re unsure how to put one together, read our cashflow management guide.
Once you’ve got your cashflow projection, we can work together to figure out the best time to pay your provisional tax. From there, all you need to do is tell us your tax amount owed, the date it is due, and how you would like to pay.
When your tax bill arrives, we’ll transfer the amount required to IR on your behalf as a time-stamped payment. IR will treat your tax as if it was paid on time, eliminating the risk of being charged interest or late payment fees. Simple.
A working capital solution
TMNZ’s payments to IR mean you can keep money in your business and use it at the times of the year you’ll need it most. You can top up your payments later into our tax pool at any time.
Tax pooling is a perfect solution for businesses worried about future cashflow and looming obligations. By partnering up with us, you’ll have total control over your tax bill, rather than working around IR’s strict deadlines.
With no more late fees and interest charges from IR to think about, you can get on with running your business. There will be no need to scrape together funds in the middle of holidays or quiet periods to meet IR’s deadlines.
TMNZ can also save you money by avoiding penalties and interest charges if you’ve missed or underpaid tax. We charge much lower interest rates than the penalties imposed by IR if you’re overdue.
We’re a line of credit
Another amazing TMNZ feature is that we can be a line of credit for your business.
If you’ve deposited funds into our tax pool but find yourself short on cash, you can withdraw that money whenever you want to use it as working capital.
If you’ve paid provisional tax into our pool, you’ll have access to a working capital facility up to the value of your deposit. This provides even more flexibility for you and your team to get through a cash crunch and stay on top of debt management.
We can offer much cheaper interest rates than bank loans, overdrafts, or unsecured loans, meaning money withdrawn from our pool is better for you and your business, putting you in a stronger position at the end of the year.
Ready to learn more about the benefits of tax pooling?
Download our guide to Better Cashflow Management for top tips on managing cashflow throughout the financial year.
If you’re ready to take control of your tax and gain access to a valuable line of credit for your business, find out more at by reading our Tax Pooling 101 page to learn more about the full range of benefits of being in our pool.
Then talk to your tax adviser about TMNZ tax pooling to take away your tax management worries.
How TMNZ tech takes the pain out of tax
As New Zealand’s first ever tax pool, we’re proud of our long history of innovation. It’s at the heart of everything we do, and we’re always looking for new ways to simplify tax.
Technology has been at the forefront of our efforts, whether it’s rolling out new features for our customers, adding new functionality online, or partnering with forward-thinking digital platforms.
Recently, we’ve rolled out some amazing tools to help our customers and their accountants easily manage income tax.
Discover our top tech solutions to help you take the pain out of tax time, including tools to cut down on admin, share data between platforms, and get instant information on things like tax swaps.
Direct Inland Revenue Integration
TMNZ’s online dashboard is fully integrated with Inland Revenue (IR), meaning taxpayer information held by IR can be seamlessly shared on our platform, to make accountants lives easier.
In the past, accountants had to deal with multiple systems and spreadsheets to find accurate IR information. Integration means this admin work is no longer required.
Inland Revenue and TMNZ systems are directly connected so that key IR information is automatically populated on our dashboard. All relevant IR data, including Residual Income Tax figures, filing dates, and direct IR transactions appear on the TMNZ dashboard once you’ve logged in.
Thanks to IR integration, accountants can save time and reduce admin work. Direct IR integration also removes the risk of manual errors as clients populate information from one platform to another, making the process much more efficient.
IR information is fed into our calculator to help you determine your (or your client’s) tax position as quickly as possible.
Kathleen Payne, Partnerships Director at TMNZ, says:
“Following IR integration, all the data you need for your calculations goes straight onto our dashboard. All you have to do is put in the current year’s position that IR might not know yet, and everything is calculated without further data entry.”
If clients need any assistance with our direct IR integration, then TMNZ’s friendly support team is on hand to help. And you can find out more about IR integration here.
TaxLab integration
TMNZ is now fully integrated with TaxLab, bringing New Zealand’s leading accountants a seamless, all-in-one solution for managing tax payments to enhance provisional tax productivity, so your practice can grow.
We know that juggling multiple platforms eats into valuable time that could be better spent elsewhere – and manual processes can create costly compliance issues, for you and your clients.
Our new TaxLlab integration eliminates these pain points through automated provisional tax workflows, real-time payment visibility and bulk processing. With the click of a button you can calculate complex tax positions, view payment statuses and send reminders and tax pooling quotes, all from the one platform.
“Accountants will get a complete picture of all TMNZ transactions sitting against their clients’ tax year,” Kathleen says.
Like the IRD integration, the setup couldn’t be simpler:
- log in to TaxLab, go to ‘Settings’, and add TMNZ as a connection
- you’ll then be directed to TMNZ to log in and confirm
- from there, you’ll be able to view TMNZ tax pooling information, including a full history of purchases, deposits, transfers, and tax payments.
Integration with Taxlab reduces the time and effort spent sharing information across the two platforms, giving tax agents even more time for their valuable client work.
Group Optimiser
If you’re a busy accountant in public practice looking to manage the tax year for groups of clients, TMNZ’s Group Optimiser tool is tailor-made for you.
This innovative feature enables accountants to calculate the position of several taxpayers and create multiple transactions at once.
Used alongside IR integration, Group Optimiser can make tax calculations even simpler.
Kathleen adds:
“Instead of having to prepare spreadsheets for each member in a group and then decide who has overpaid or underpaid tax, agents can use our calculator to enter a small amount of information. Then, at the click of a button, Group Optimiser calculates how to use the tax across the group in the most effective way.”
Group Optimser is ready and waiting on the TMNZ dashboard. All you need to do is log in.
Upcoming Deadlines
The Upcoming Deadlines function on the TMNZ dashboard is another of our top tech features.
For accountants managing several tax pooling clients, the Upcoming Deadlines feature can be used to track taxpayers ahead of key dates.
Offering total visibility over client tax positions as deadlines approach, the tool suggests prompts and actions to finalise the year.
“It also gives accountants a control list to work through their clients and ensure everything has been finalised,” Kathleen says. “It’s a workflow and control function and will remind advisers about everything they need to do for their clients.”
Automated Tax Swaps
TMNZ’s automated Tax Swaps is our latest dashboard feature, enabling clients to get instant quotes and process swaps below the threshold*.
Tax Swaps allow clients to even out their provisional tax payments if they have overpaid on one date and underpaid on another, saving on IR interest costs.
With our automated Tax Swap service, clients will benefit from faster, more efficient processing
The best part? The Tax Swap function is DIY.
“It’s a self-service system,” Kathleen explains. “If a client knows the swap they want to do, our system will automatically say, ‘Yes, you can do it, and this is the interest you’ll get’. You won’t have to interact with us at TMNZ. You can do-it-yourself.”
“It’s super efficient,” she adds. “Clients will have certainty of the outcome, they’ll know how much interest they’ll have to pay, or what they can earn, in an instant.
“At TMNZ, we’re all about flexibility, and empowering our customers to make decisions at a time that suits them.”
Automated Tax Swaps launched recently, following our pilot with TMNZ’s Early Adopter community in April.
Become an Early Adopter
Are you part of TMNZ’s Early Adopter community, who gets first access to all our latest tech features?
Early Adopters enjoy the benefits of our new products and enhancements before anyone else, with support and training to help you make the most of new tools.
As an Early Adopter, you can share feedback and experiences to help us develop the best tech possible for accountants and clients.
“We love working with people to create the best tax solutions possible,” Kathleen adds. “Our Early Adopters are highly motivated, creative people who want to help us get even better.”
If you’re a tech savvy tax pooling user in an accounting firm, become an Early Adopter in a few simple steps:
- login to your dashboard
- Select your firm
- select ‘Early Adopter Programme’, from the left-hand menu
- review and accept the Terms and Conditions presented
- click the ‘Sign up’ button.
To learn more about TMNZ’s latest tech developments, head to our Innovative Tax Technology page or contact our support team today.
*the threshold is subject to change depending on market conditions.
How tax pooling can help your tax management
Meet Andy, a builder who has run his own business for three years. Things are going well, and he’s set to make a substantial profit in the current financial year. He’s well-paid and smart enough to set aside tax he owes with each payment. But clients don’t always pay him on time, causing some serious headaches.
Like many businesses, Andy experiences cashflow issues. He makes a profit but doesn’t always have enough funds in his account to pay provisional tax when it’s due.
What should Andy do? Grin and bear the Inland Revenue’s late payment penalties and use of money interest charges after missing his payment dates? Or seek a better option?
Luckily, Andy’s accountant Lisa knows all about tax pooling and how it can relieve the financial pressure.
Tax pooling explained
Andy asks his accountant how tax pooling works and some of its main benefits.
Lisa explains that tax pooling has been available to taxpayers for two decades, starting in 2003 when TMNZ became a registered provider with IR.
The accountant says tax pooling has clear benefits over traditional tax management:
- Taxpayers can choose to pay their liabilities in a time and manner that suits them, without having to worry about IR interest and penalties.
- They can make significant savings on use of money interest charged and eliminate late payment penalties if they miss or underpay provisional tax, or if they are reassessed by IR.
- When taxpayers overpay into the TMNZ tax pool, they can earn a much higher rate of interest on overpayment of funds than they would receive from the IR.
Who oversees TMNZ’s tax pool?
Lisa assures Andy that all payments made into TMNZ’s tax pool account at the IR are managed by an independent trustee, Guardian Trust.
Guardian Trust oversees the bank accounts into which taxpayers pay their money, as well as the transfer of funds from the TMNZ tax pool to Andy’s IR account.
Because the tax being transferred has been paid and date stamped as at the original due date, any penalties and interest are wiped once the payment is processed by the IR.
Companies of all sizes can use tax pooling
Tax pooling can help businesses of all sizes, from companies with thousands of employees down to sole traders. TMNZ’s tax pool is the largest and most established in the country.
Lisa’s research found two companies TMNZ has helped.
One company uses tax pooling to counteract fluctuating seasonal revenue:
“It takes away all those stresses. You’re passing it on to somebody else and saying, ‘take care of this for me, I don’t know what to do, we’ve got a shortage of cashflow’ and it’s the best way of putting more energy into your business and doing the things that you’re good at.”
The second company uses a tax pool as they need to invest in equipment regularly.
"With a business like ours, we are investing quite heavily into assets like cars, campers, and boats. Cash upfront is important [for] us to have.”
TMNZ has helped both companies manage working capital and mitigate the risk of fees and penalties.
“What is the cost of this?” Andy asks.
“Just TMNZ interest,” Lisa replies.
Tax pools can help with voluntary disclosures and audits
Lisa looks through Andy’s expected outgoings for the year. These range from the cost of living to many other expenses associated with owning a business.
The accountant realises that in a previous year, Andy made a mistake on one of his returns and must file a voluntary disclosure with the IR.
“How can Andy get ahead with the current year if he now has to pay an additional amount of tax for a past year?” Lisa wonders.
TMNZ can assist taxpayers who owe an increased amount of tax as a result of a voluntary disclosure or audit.
Tax pooling provides 60 days from the date the IR reassessment notice was issued to buy the tax payment he needs and send it to the IR.
The different tax types available to purchase are historic income tax payments, deferrable tax, and agreed delay tax, as well as other tax types such as GST, RWT, PIE, FBT, NRT, and DWT.
Lisa can use TMNZ to reduce the interest and late payment penalties cost of Andy’s voluntary disclosure.
For the current tax year, Lisa can set up either a Flexitax or Tax Finance arrangement to give him more flexibility and time to pay (up to 75 days past his terminal tax date for that tax year).
Lisa has other clients that are medium-large taxpayers with big bills and paydays. TMNZ’s Tax Deposit solution can help them.
Other advantages of tax pooling
There are several other advantages to using a tax pool:
- Excess funds paid into the pool can either be used for future dates and any other tax types where a reassessment has not been issued.
- There’s the option to sell surplus tax to a taxpayer who has underpaid to earn additional interest.
- The refund process is much faster than directly through the IR (within three to five days, and without having to file a return for the year).
Take back control
Take control of your tax management with TMNZ tax pooling — a more convenient way to meet your provisional tax obligations.
We offer solutions for all kinds of businesses and financial situations. If you’re new to paying provisional tax, check out our resources on managing tax and business cashflow here.
Ask your accountant about tax pooling options today, or get in touch with our team to find out more.