The AAT has ordered that a decision of the Tax Practitioners Board refusing to renew a tax agent’s registration be stayed pending the hearing of the tax agent’s application for a review of that decision.
The applicant had operated as a registered tax agent for 26 years and in September 2013, the Board refused to renew his registration as a tax agent on grounds that he was not a fit and proper person. The applicant applied to the AAT for a review of that decision and for the decision to be stayed. This hearing concerned only the stay application.
There were 3 key issues central to the question of whether the applicant was a fit and proper person to be registered as a tax agent – his alleged bad behaviour, allegations of improper conduct as a tax agent and his bankruptcy.
The AAT concluded that a stay should be granted notwithstanding the applicant’s “previous bad behaviour and improper conduct”. Relevant factors in this decision included:
- the applicant’s case was not so weak or devoid of reasonable prospects that a stay should necessarily be refused;
- the likelihood that the applicant’s business and income would be seriously affected if a stay was not granted;
- the administration of justice required that the applicant should be given a reasonable opportunity to test the basis on which the Board’s decision rested; and
- the inconvenience to the applicant’s clients, especially the 40 to 50 for whom he had work on foot, if a stay was not granted.
However, various conditions were imposed on the applicant, including that he not take on new clients and that he conduct himself in a civil and appropriate manner in all dealings with the Board, the Tax Office and the AAT.
(AAT Case [2014] AATA 17, Re Mahaffy and the Tax Practitioners Board (AAT, Webb M, Ref: 2013/5357, 15 January 2014.)
[LTN 11, 17/1/14]