If you are a financial planner or adviser providing tax advice or advice on tax consequences as part of your financial advise to clients for a fee or reward, you must be registered with the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) as a tax (financial) adviser in order to provide this service legally.
It is a breach of the civil penalty provisions contained in the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 (TASA) for individuals, companies and partnerships to provide tax (financial) advice services for a fee or other reward, or to advertise tax (financial) advice services, unless these entities are registered with the TPB. This applies to all entities, including:
Australian financial services (AFS) licenseesauthorised representatives, including individual and/or corporate authorised representatives.
Employee representatives may be required to be registered for the purpose of a company or partnership having a sufficient number of registered tax (financial) advisers or tax agents. The “sufficient number” is a somewhat slippery requirement of the TPB, as it states that there is “no set formula that can be applied for determining the sufficient number of registered individuals that a partnership or company is required to have” in order to satisfy this requirement.
The TPB says that what is a sufficient number “will depend on the individual circumstances of the partnership or company and the work they are required to undertake for their clients”. It says factors that will need to be considered are:
the size of the businessthe services being offeredthe supervisory arrangements in placethe conditions that may be imposed on the partnership or company registration based on the qualifications and experience of its personnel.
The TPB says however that knowing the basic requirements for partnerships or companies of having a sufficient number of registered individuals, the requirement to provide services to a competent standard and to allow for supervision, “should enable professionals themselves to determine what is required”.
Transitional registration period expires June 30 Practitioners have only until June 30 this year to register under the available transitional registration option. This will then allow you three extra years to meet all the standard registration requirements (find out more about this here).
New registrants taking advantage of the transitional option will receive:
more time to obtain qualifications and experiencefull documentation not requiredstandard registration application not mandatory until 2020.
Under the transitional option, practitioners must satisfy the TPB that they have sufficient experience to provide advice to a competent standard. This is generally the equivalent of 18 months or longer of full-time experience related to providing tax (financial) advice or tax advice given in the context of financial planning.
After June 30, if registrants are not using a transitional registration, all new registrations or renewals will need to meet the standard registration requirements.
#[financial advice], [tax], [tax (financial) advisers], [tpb]
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