Chair's message - 30 January 2012

Welcome to the New Year. I have taken the opportunity in this message to remind BAS agents and tax agents who became registered by notifying the Board to renew their registration before it expires on 1 March 2012. I also talk about the short videos available on our website to assist BAS agents to renew their registration, about new certificates of registration, changes we have made to the Statement of Relevant Experience form for BAS agents and comment on why the Board may need to request further information when processing an application.

I will also discuss the input we are seeking from agents on certain aspects of the Code of Professional Conduct, in the context of Board’s work on professional standards.

BAS agent and tax agent - time is running out to renew!

There are still many BAS and tax agents who need to renew their registration with the Board before it expires on 1 March 2012. It is important for these agents to renew their registration if they want to continue to legally provide BAS services or tax agent services for a fee or other reward. I am thinking here of BAS agent and tax agent ‘notifiers’ who notified the Board that they had been providing BAS or tax agent services prior to 1 March 2010 to become registered.

Although we have now passed the nominated BAS agent and tax agent renewal deadline of 29 January 2012 for notifiers, and while the Board strongly suggests that all agents renew their registration 30 days before it expires, agents should not be concerned if after 29 January 2012 they still have not lodged their renewal application on line, but they need to renew before 1 March 2012.

At present, while we process applications from BAS agent and tax agent notifiers, the Board will accept renewal applications up until the day before an agent’s registration expires. This means that for BAS agent and tax agent notifiers the Board will accept their renewal applications provided they are made on or before 29 February 2012.

As an agent you have been provided with information about the online registration process and transitional registration. Our aim is to help you understand the registration process so that you may renew your registration successfully and on time. If you have any questions about renewing your registration email notifiers@tpb.gov.au or call 1300 362 829.

BAS agents can look at our registration videos online

The TPB has released a series of videos titled ‘TPB tips’. This is a series of six ‘how to’ videos designed to help BAS agents understand education and qualification requirements for registration. There has been a good response to these videos that are another tool to help agents understand the Board’s requirements for registration and make the registration process easier. Video topics include renewing registration, registration requirements, such as relevant experience, and tips on how to renew online. To view the videos go to www.tpb.gov.au

We are also fielding a number of questions on the meaning of relevant experience for BAS agents, in addition to the short video on this topic, check out the information on our website which provides some useful guidance.

Registered BAS agents renewing incorrectly

Whilst we appreciate that agents renewing their registration have been experiencing some difficulty logging in to their registered account due to website traffic, we have found many registered BAS agents are creating new accounts in error on the agent login page.

If you are renewing your registration please refer to the letter sent to you by the Board in December 2011 that provides details of how to log in to your registered account on. If you are locked out of your registered account, please email enquirymanagement@tpb.gov.au with the subject heading ‘USER LOCKED’. If you have forgotten your password use the ‘Forgotten password? Click here’ link.

Applying for BAS transitional registration online

If you do not yet have the qualifications to apply for standard registration as a BAS agent, there is a form of registration application known as a transitional registration application option which will give you at least another year to get those qualifications. If you are currently not registered as a BAS agent and would like to apply for transitional registration, go to the agent login section of our website, please note that you only need to create an account once. We have had many applicants create multiple unnecessary accounts. If you have any difficulties accessing your created account, please contact us on 1300 362 829.

Some comments about our follow up questions, during registration processing

Quite often, after applicants (including existing registered agents) have lodged their registration applications, Board staff need to follow up with them to obtain further information. We need to ask questions about the information they have provided or about information that may not have been provided on the registration application form.
Where staff are required to obtain additional or missing information from an agent, staff generally request that this information be supplied within seven days. This is to ensure that we are able to process the application as soon as possible. Where volumes of applications to be processed are high, we may take longer than that period to follow up.

We do need also to ask about whether the applicant is a voting member of a recognised association. Although this information may have been provided some years ago when an already registered agent applied for renewal, we do not know if the applicant is still a voting member at the time of re-registration.

If an agent is a voting member of a recognised BAS agent association or recognised tax agent association, in the case of BAS agents, there is a reduced relevant experience requirement of 1,000 hours (rather than 1,400 hours for non-voting members).

To help us to process your application as quickly as possible, we suggest that all applicants make sure that all questions on the form have been correctly and fully answered, even if you think that you answered some of the same questions some time ago.

Changes to our Statement of Relevant Experience form (SRE)

We have recently made some changes to our SRE for BAS agents in order to make it easier to agents to complete. The key change is in how we ask agents about the number and type of activity statements they have been involved in. The key change is around the detail we require about the BAS services provided in the last three years. Previously the form asked for a breakdown of the number of activity statements prepared for each of the client groups of individuals, partnerships, companies, trust and superannuation and a further breakdown of the proportion of the total number of activity statements that related to each of the various BAS provisions. The new form simply asks for the number of clients and the number of activity statements prepared in the last three years, with tick boxes for the type of BAS services. For further details, see our website.

Certificates of registration

In January and February 2012 many existing tax agents will receive a new Board issued Certificate of Registration. This replaces the tax agent certificate of registration issued previously by the State Tax Agents’ Boards. Agents may wish to replace the old certificate with the new one and display it for public view.

Professional Practice

The Board is seeking input from agents on Code Item 9 of the Code of Professional Conduct. Code Item 9 provides that registered tax and BAS agents must take reasonable care in ascertaining a client’s state of affairs, to the extent that ascertaining the state of those affairs is relevant to a statement the agent is making or a thing the agent is doing on behalf of the client.

Late last year, the Board released a discussion paper seeking feedback from professional associations, the ATO and a sample of tax and BAS agents within the Geelong region. Follow up consultation with the Geelong agents is scheduled for mid February.

The aim of this consultation is to obtain further information about practical examples (from simple to quite complex) that agents have encountered in practice. This includes areas involving the preparation and lodgement of tax returns and business activity statements (BAS), and also other tax agent and BAS services, such as advice work.

The Board encourages all tax and BAS agents to provide practical examples of situations that they encounter in their work as a tax practitioner, in the context of applying Code Item 9.

The Board has published information on the application of Code Item 9 in Explanatory Paper TPB (EP) 01/2010 Code of Professional Conduct (TPB (EP) 01/2010).

I would encourage you to provide your comments if you have had practical examples that relate to this code item. Once the Board has received further comments, we will prepare and publish an exposure draft information sheet which will be subject to a separate consultation period. We hope to incorporate relevant comments and examples from our stakeholders into the exposure draft information sheet.

Dale Boucher
Chair
Tax Practitioners Board
30 January 2012