BAS agents; renew now
If you became registered as a BAS agent or tax agent by notifying the Board that, prior to 1 March 2010, you were providing BAS services or tax agent services your registration will expire on 29 February 2012.
To ensure that you can continue to legally be able to provide services, you need to lodge your renewal application by 29 February 2012. If you do not do this, you will no longer be able to legally work as a BAS agent or tax agent if you charge fees for these services. If you are unregistered and continue to charge a fee for your service you may be liable to pay a penalty.
I urge you to renew your registration now. You can do this through the online application form on our website and by lodging the application fee.
If you have any questions regarding renewing you can email notifiers@tpb.gov.au, call us on 1300 362 829 or fax on 1300 734 817.
When will the TPB contact you about your renewal?
The length of time that it takes us to process your registration, whether new or renewing will vary depending on your individual circumstances. When you submit your application online we will send you an email confirming that we have received it.
We aim to process your registration as quickly as possible. However your registration may be delayed for a variety of reasons, so be sure to provide all the necessary information. Delays can occur if you have a complex business structure or you may not have provided sufficient evidence of relevant experience. Your registration will be considered complete when you have provided all relevant documentation and paid the application fee.
Due to the large number of agents renewing their registration at the moment, processing times are longer than usual. We are not happy about this ourselves and we are doing everything we can to reduce the processing times. We appreciate your patience. Please be aware that once you have lodged your renewal application you will remain registered until we contact you with a decision in writing.
We want to hear from you
On Friday 17 February we hosted a discussion group for tax and BAS agents in Geelong, Victoria. These forums provide a valuable opportunity for us to hear from agents based in regional areas. The focus of the discussion group centred on reasonable care for the purposes of the Code of Conduct items 9 and 10. It was great to learn about the agents’ practical experiences. The feedback from the agents was broad, and significant points were made about materiality, scoping, diarising, contracts with your clients (particularly where they give you new or altered instructions) and the importance of source documents.
Many of these issues and their practical application ultimately require your professional judgement. We are doing further work on these topics.
An unrelated question to come out of the forum was about agents receiving a tax invoice upon payment of their registration fee. If you would like a receipt of payment please email registrations@tpb.gov.au. We will look into automatically sending a receipt in the future.
Board changes
Unfortunately I am announcing that Professor Gordon Cooper AM, an inaugural Board member since 23 October 2009, recently resigned from the Board. Gordon was involved in the development of the new tax agent services legislation since 1992. Gordon was a member of the former NSW Tax Agents Board for a long time and he made a great contribution to this Board, right across a spectrum of our activities. His expertise and knowledge of Australia’s tax system was greatly valued by all of the Board and our staff. Of course, we wish him well for the future.
Regards
Dale Boucher
Chair
Tax Practitioners Board