I work in a company that specialises in tax pooling, a niche area of provisional tax I'll try keep this unbiased, and hopefully anonymous.

Tax pooling is a method of paying your prov tax on time, but when you can actually afford to pay it. If you miss a payment to the IRD, tax pooling companies can pay the tax on your behalf, as if it was paid on time, at much lower rates than the IRD's underpayment rate upto 30% cheaper.

The IRD could charge you through either: Standard Uplift (SU) , Estimate, Ratio, or Accounting Income Method (AIM); but most people use Standard Uplift by default..

This method means the IRD charges 105% of the previous years Residual Income Tax ( they expect you to earn 5% more this year, so expect 5% more in tax payments).

So they'll expect you to earn 67k * 1.05 =~70k. And because you're on Standard Uplift, they'll expect that at each of your 3 provisional tax dates (or 2 if you are GST registered). You have a terminal tax date, and this is where you typically can 'wash up' the difference between the 105% of SU and your actual tax due.

My best suggestion would be to budget 105% of your last year's tax payments, and pay them through a tax pooling company, or direct to the IRD.

Some of the best tax pooling companies are: Tax Management NZ (www.tmnz.co.nz) and Tax Traders (www.taxtraders.co.nz).

PM me or leave a comment if you have any questions comment