Login
iscover
The Tax Practitioners Board has launched a campaign targeting small businesses and individual taxpayers to warn them on using unregistered agents, after finding unregistered agents were using popular sites and apps to dish out advice.
Newsletter
TPB spies on unregistered agents online, launches new tax time campaign
13 June 2018
•
9 minute read
The TPB has announced that in the build up to tax time 2018, it will advertise on Google, Yellow Pages online, TrueLocal online, and Gumtree to ensure that small businesses and taxpayers looking for a tax or BAS agent understand that their agent needs to be registered with the TPB.
You’re out of free articles for this month
To continue reading the rest of this article, please log in.
Create free account to get unlimited news articles and more!
Speaking to Accountants Daily, Institute of Certified Bookkeepers executive director, Matthew Addison said the public awareness campaign by the TPB follows a compliance campaign by the board that found a number of unregistered agents pedalling their services on online platforms.
“The TPB did some proactive compliance work and found on Gumtree or similar sites where you had unregistered agents advertising to provide tax or BAS services and they followed up with those people and changed the behaviour of a number of practitioners who were illegally operating,” said Mr Addison.
“These are people that have not met the requirements or not declared that they meet the requirements so they are unregistered and providing services to clients and they shouldn't be because in order to provide tax services to clients, you need to be registered with the board which has those requirements of education, experience, and competence, and adhering to the code of conduct and also professional indemnity insurance which an unregistered agent may or may not have.”
The campaign follows a $20 million funding boost to the TPB, as announced in the federal budget last month.
The additional funding will come from an increase in tax and BAS agent registration fees, in a bid to ensure the TPB is able to “protect consumers of tax services by registering and regulating nearly 80,000 tax agents, business activity statement agents and tax financial advisers in Australia.”
Similar issues surfaced earlier this year with car dealerships offering unsolicited and often high-risk tax advice in relation to car loans and purchases. At the time, the TPB said it has received information about unlicensed tax advice being offered by car dealerships in an ultimate effort to push clients into purchasing a product or entering a financing arrangement.
You need to be a member to post comments. Become a member for free today!
