18/11/2008
TAX AGENT SERVICES 2008 BILL – rushed into parliament for debate next Wednesday 26th
This bill was first tabled in parliament last week, allowing the public release of the Tax Agent Services 2008 Bill itself and the Explanatory Memorandum. However missing from the documents tabled were the other papers with significant immediate impact being the associated Regulations and the Transitional Bill.
The prime ministers website @ http://pmc.gov.au/parliamentary/reps/html/reps.html, has listed the 2nd reading and debate of the recently finalised Tax Agent Services Bill for next Wednesday 26th November. (6th last sitting day for the year) for both houses)
Why is it being rushed in when treasury has continued to inform us as late as this morning that it wasn't to be debated until March?
We are hoping that this means it is a mechanism to have the missing papers tabled in parliament and therefore made available to the public.
So what?
All the provisions of the new law require a yet to be appointed Tax Practitioners Board to undertake a significant amount of work. The current law allows a maximum 9 month delay from enactment through to commencement (i.e. before the Transition Period starts and before the Tax Board has to start processing applications amongst other duties).
If the law is rushed in and this delay period shortened, not only will we have an under prepared tax board, but prospective BAS Agents will be required to undertake measures to enable their moving into being a Transitional BAS Agent or alternatively position and resource themselves very quickly to be eligible to register.
All this when we don’t have adequate guidance behind various parts of the new system.
