ABSIA provided a follow up submission on 30 August 2019 to the Review of the Tax Practitioners Board Discussion Paper released in July 2019.
In the lead up to our submission, a call was organised between Treasury, ABSIA Board Members and representatives from our accounting software provider members to discuss issues raised in our original submission and other key points that were included in the new discussion paper.
Our key points in this submission included:
- The TPB's information sharing requirements should be considered as a part of the Office of the National Data Commissioner's data sharing legislation;
- Information should be shared more effectively between the TPB, ASIC and ATO;
- The TPB register of tax practitioners should be incorporated into the Modernising Business Registers program in a future phase;
- The TPB should include a board member with relevant expertise in current and future information technology and an understanding of the government's Digital Agenda;
- Tertiary courses should align with changing digital processes, evolving policies and new capabilities that are required for tax professionals to be successful;
- TPB regulation should only be applied to the tax services and advice roles within a company, not the software engineers who simply provide the solution;
- The TPB needs a better understanding of how the ATO regulates DSPs to avoid the overregulation of DSPs;
- The TPB should be able to approve education programs provided by professional associations;
- The TPB should be focused on regulating tax agents rather than regulating the professional bodies; and
- We provided various ways to re-define 'tax agent service'.
Due to the nature of this consultation, we provided our submission as in-line responses within the original discussion paper. To enable easy reading, we have collated our answers in this document.