The AAT has upheld a Tax Practitioners Board decision and rejected a tax agent’s application for renewal of her registration as a tax agent.
The tax agent had been registered since 1980. The agent had been audited on several occasions by the ATO and adjustments totalling over $500,000 had been made to the assessments of 29 of her clients. The AAT said the Tax Practitioners Board had also received a complaint alleging that the tax agent had accessed the records of another agent’s clients through the Tax Agent Portal without authorisation. The Board investigated and rejected her application for renewal as a tax agent as it considered she had failed to comply with provisions of the Code of Professional Conduct in the Tax Agents Services Act 2009 (TASA).
The Tribunal was of the view the agent did not possess the level of competence in the handling of her clients’ taxation affairs which would be necessary for her to be regarded as a “fit and proper” person to be a tax agent. The Tribunal also concluded that the agent had shown “little in the way of contrition or appreciation of the seriousness of her conduct and, accordingly, there is no basis for confidence that, if given the opportunity, she would not repeat the same types of conduct in the future, both with respect to the management of the taxation affairs of her clients, and in her dealings with the ATO”.
The Tribunal affirmed the decision under review, which had the effect of rejecting the agent’s application for renewal of her registration as a tax agent.
(AAT Case [2014] AATA 687, Re Burnett and Tax Practitioners Board, AAT, Bean DP, AAT Ref: 2014/0136, 19 September 2014.)
[LTN 184, 23/9/14]