DSPANZ provided a submission to the Tax Practitioners Board's (TPB) consultation on the draft guidance surrounding the new TPB Code obligations on 3 September 2024.
In our submission we highlighted the potential unintended consequences for DSPs who offer tax, accounting or payroll software products, including:
- The Code obligations may result in DSPs taking steps to ensure they are not providing tax agent or BAS services to avoid them, which may negatively impacts the tax practitioners and taxpayers utilising software to meet their tax and payroll obligations.
- The current ambiguity in the guidance surrounding false or misleading statements to the TPB or Commission could result in registered DSPs being required to dob in their customers.
We recommended that the new obligations be redrafted to explicitly exclude DSPs, their products and services from the Code's scope given that it was unlikely that the Code could be applied universally to the wide range of products and capabilities provided by DSPs.
Access a full copy of this submission here.