The office of the Inspector-General of Taxation now and then reviews the functionality of the relationship between the ATO and tax practitioners in general. ATO tax practitioners: Bouquets brickbats?
As the Inspector-General (IGT) said in the last such review: “Tax practitioners play an important role in the tripartite relationship with the ATO and taxpayers, as they provide unique insight into improving the tax system as well as facilitating taxpayers’ compliance.”
Submissions to the last IGT review raised significant concerns about the ATO/tax practitioner relationship, citing that the ATO does not:
appropriately engage tax practitioners or understand their circumstances when designing its practices and processes, resulting in a transfer of workloads and administrative costs from the ATO to tax practitioners;adequately respond to difficulties tax practitioners face with ATO services, such as the ATO portals, website and telephone service, causing unnecessary delays and irrecoverable costs for them; andsufficiently recognise tax practitioners’ role to facilitate taxpayer compliance or their different business models, particularly in requiring 85% of all tax practitioners’ clients tax returns to be lodged on time (85% lodgment rule) with potentially adverse consequences if such a target was not met.
See more of the IGT’s conclusions on the relationship between the ATO and the wider tax practitioner community by clicking here.
Does the ATO “get” tax professionals?
The IGT says that since 2003, the ATO has gauged the level of tax practitioner satisfaction by engaging an independent contractor to conduct surveys every two years. The last such survey available is the Tax practitioner research 2013 report (the research for 2015 was an online survey on the “lodgment program framework”), which asked the following pertinent question: “How do tax practitioners’ businesses operate, and what implications does that have for the ATO?”
The results found that tax practitioners do not believe that the ATO has a very good understanding of the issues confronting them, with 28% reporting that something the ATO had done from an operational or administrative perspective had had a negative impact on their business.
The ATO research naturally found that tax practitioner businesses provide a very wide range of services and have quite varied service profiles. It found that for most tax agents, general tax work is their main work – but for BAS agents nearly a third report that general tax work is secondary to their main work.
“Perhaps in part related to that complexity and variability, only 35% of tax agents and 44% of BAS agents agree that the ATO has a good idea of the issues confronting tax practitioners — and 40% of tax agents and 21% of BAS agents actively disagree this is the case.”
The research also found that 34% of tax agents and 21% of BAS agents believed something the ATO had or had not done in an administrative or operational sense (over the previous year) negatively affected their business. This proportion was higher for those tax practitioners who were globally negative towards the ATO, and/or who disagreed that the ATO has a good understanding of their issues.
“Again, the direction of this relationship can’t be determined,” the report said, “but the correlation indicates that these perceptions are likely to be influencing and reinforcing one another.”
#[ATO], [IGT], [inspector general of taxation], [relationship counselling], [tax]
Comments