The ATO has advised that it is exploring the concept of how basic assurance work might be done using existing external compliance-assurance processes (ECAP). As part of this project, the ATO says it will consider a new approach to risk-assurance work relating to some publicly listed companies. These would be taxpayers the ATO has categorised as “medium-risk” and have a turnover between id=”mce_marker”00m and $5bn.
ATO Assistant Deputy Commissioner Stuart Hamilton said part of the potential approach is whether these taxpayers could choose to use a registered company auditor to provide assurance to the ATO on certain matters without the need for the ATO to conduct a review.
The ATO says it would identify matters where it required assurance and focus on matters of fact. Using ECAP approaches, taxpayers would be offered the choice of using their external auditor to carry out the fact checking. If a taxpayer did not wish to use their existing external auditor to provide the assurance, the Deputy Commissioner said the ATO would conduct the review in accordance with its current review process.
[FJM Note: this doesn’t say whether the ATO would pay the auditor or the company would have to bear the cost of doing the ATO’s work for it.]
[LTN 224, 19/11/3]