A company tax agent has had their registration terminated and is banned from applying for registration for three years. Following an investigation, the Board Conduct Committee (BCC) found the company breached multiple provisions of the Code of Professional Conduct (Code).

Our investigations revealed that the company failed to act honestly and with integrity and didn’t comply with taxation laws in the conduct of its personal affairs (Code 1 and 2 breaches) by:  

• making false and misleading statements to us about whether they had outstanding tax obligations, the fitness and propriety of its directors and that certain tax agents were acting as supervising agents for the company when in fact they weren’t 

• including the name of a registered tax agent on multiple self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) annual returns that it lodged with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), when the agent had no knowledge or involvement in the preparation or lodgement of the returns 

• in its capacity as the trustee for a trust, failing to pay a significant outstanding tax debt of the trust when it fell due and payable. 

In addition to these breaches, the BCC also found that: 

• the company failed to account to a client for money it held on trust for a client relating to a roll-over of their superannuation entitlements (Code 3 breach) 

• when the client lodged a complaint with us, the company provided a financial incentive to the client to withdraw the complaint in an attempt to obstruct our investigation into its conduct (Code 11 breach).

In making its decision to terminate the company’s registration, the BCC noted that the TPB’s role is to ensure consumer protection and that it has an objective to protect and maintain the integrity of the registered tax practitioner profession. The BCC considered that the company’s attempt to obstruct our investigation is particularly serious behaviour, and that allowing the company to remain registered and continue to provide tax agent services would pose a significant risk to the public.