Issued: 24 August 2022
Last modified: 24 August 2022
Date of decision: 16 June 2022
A tax agent declared in their registration renewal application lodged that they met our minimum continuing professional education (CPE) requirements. The tax agent was asked to provide evidence of completing their CPE. The CPE logs eventually provided by the agent after repeated requests showed they fell short of the minimum number of hours of CPE that registered tax agents are required to complete.
The Board Conduct Committee (BCC) determined that the tax agent breached the Code of Professional Conduct (Code) as they failed to:
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act honestly and with integrity by declaring they met our CPE requirements when they knew that the statement was false (Code item 1)
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maintain knowledge and skills relevant to the tax agent services they provide by failing to complete the minimum level of CPE (Code item 8).
The tax agent was also the sole director and supervising agent of their company tax agent. An Australian Taxation Office audit into one of the company’s clients revealed the tax agent had failed to disclose the correct taxable income in the client’s individual and company tax returns.
It was found that the tax agent had provided a declaration supporting the client’s mortgage application in which the client had declared income that was higher than what was reported in the client’s individual and company tax returns that were lodged by the agent. The agent had further allowed their employee to sign the client’s mortgage application declaration when the agent knew or ought to have known that the information in the mortgage application was inconsistent with the information provided in the tax returns.
The BCC noted that the individual tax agent had failed to act diligently and responsibly in this matter, and found that both the individual and company tax agents were in breach of Code item 7.
Decision
Considering the above findings, the BCC imposed the following sanctions on the individual tax agent and their company registration:
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a suspension of registration for 3 months for the individual tax agent
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an order requiring the individual tax agent to complete the required hours of CPE within 2 months
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a suspension of registration for 3 months for the company, as the company would be without a supervising tax agent for this duration.