Muinmos and TConsult have signed an agreement to integrate TConsult’s Investor Self-Declaration platform (ISD) into Muinmos’ Client Onboarding Platform, enabling Muinmos’ clients, typically financial institutions, to automatically obtain ISDs instead of using multiple paper tax certification forms to document the tax status of their clients.
TConsult’s ISD platform, part of the firm’s Tax Compliance Toolkittm, and Muinmos’ Client Onboarding Platform are built around the same principles - to make compliance easier, safer and hassle-free. TConsult’s ISD Platform allows financial firms to solicit a single digital tax residency self-certificate that meets a financial firm’s obligations under a number of different global withholding tax regulations.
Signing for TConsult, Kirsty Pitkin, CEO said “Our ISD platform is the result of over three years’ work to establish a single digital electronically signed document that conforms to the US FATCA anti-tax evasion regulations, the OECD TRACE framework for tax relief at source, the OECD Common Reporting Standard (CRS) and the US Qualified Intermediary (QI) regulations for tax relief at source.”
Financial firms globally are already subject to a number of different extra-territorial and domestic anti-tax evasion laws, most of which require due diligence of account holders based on self-certifications of tax residency. It is estimated that there are currently over 900 million self-certifications in circulation globally, almost all are paper, over 60%[1] of which are not fit for purpose - putting the beneficial owner and financial institution at risk of substantial non-compliance to anti-tax evasion regulations and over-withholding.
Much like Muinmos, TConsult has built its ISD platform to allow for a streamlined, digital user experience. This leads to an electronically signed investor self-declaration of tax residency and, where applicable, a claim of tax treaty benefits on which a financial institution can rely to meet its regulatory obligations as well as providing the basis for a reduction in tax rates paid on dividends under the terms of a double tax treaty. The ISD platform presents in multiple languages to make the account holder experience easier. APIs between the ISD and Muinmos platforms make sure that, to the extent allowed by regulators, the account holder only has to provide information once. TConsult’s proprietary tax logic underpinning the ISD system ensures that errors, that typically result in a greater than 60% failure rate when paper forms are used, are eradicated.
Signing for Muinmos, Remonda Kirketerp-Møller, CEO and founder said “This is a very important development for us. Our clients have been asking for this for some time so they have all the regulatory requirements for the onboarding stage consolidated into one platform and we’re delighted to have partnered with the leading tax experts in the industry to deliver this. Most financial firms have responded to increased regulatory pressure by embedding tax certifications into onboarding processes in order to reduce cost and risk. The Muinmos platform gives them complete control over the onboarding process and now, thanks to the partnership with TConsult, they can include digital tax certifications in a single seamless onboarding process.”