The Federal Court has made a decision concerning the issue of appropriate penalty to be imposed on an individual for contraventions of s 50-5(1) of the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 [providing tax agent services if unregistered].
In an earlier judgment, the Court held the individual had contravened s 50-5(1) on 86 separate occasions between July 2010 and October 2012 by preparing and lodging income tax returns for clients of her accounting business, and charging a fee or reward for those services. The Court also made an order requiring the individual, for a period of 3 years, to disclose to clients seeking tax agent services that she was not a registered tax agent and cannot charge a fee for such services: see Tax Practitioners Board v Dedic [2014] FCA 307 (handed down on 31 March 2014).
The current proceedings before the Court concerned pecuniary penalties. In respect of the 86 contraventions of s 50-5(1) earlier declared by the Court on 31 March 2014, the Federal Court fixed a pecuniary penalty of $500 for each of the 86 contraventions (ie a total penalty of $43,000). Due to the individual’s limited capacity to pay, the Court made an order to allow payment by instalments. It also included an order giving the individual the liberty to apply to extend the instalment due dates.
(Tax Practitioners Board v Dedic [2014] FCA 511, Federal Court, Davies J, 20 May 2014.)
[LTN 95, 20/5/14]