Liberal senator urges colleagues to join fight against TASA changes
Dave Sharma has highlighted the new rules' impact on privacy and client relationships issues ahead of a crucial Senate vote.
Liberal MP Dave Sharma has urged all Senators to back his party’s motion to block the government’s changes to the tax agent code of conduct, rallying support ahead of the 10 September vote.
The NSW senator said Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones’ determination had to be disallowed to prevent “far-reaching” impacts on practitioners’ privacy and client relationships.
“I urge my colleagues to study this determination closely, talk to tax practitioners affected by this determination and join us in this disallowance motion to allow proper consultation to be had with those affected by these quite far-reaching changes,” Sharma said in a two-minute statement in the Senate last week.
The Coalition’s push to disallow the changes in a fortnight comes after intense lobbying from professional bodies and practitioners in the weeks since the determination was registered on 2 July.
While Jones deferred determination’s original 1 August start date, the substance of its eight new obligations remains unchanged.
Sharma said a number of accountants and tax professionals had contacted his office to express their concerns, particularly around sections 45 and 15 of the determination.
Section 45 forces practitioners to disclose “any” matter that could significantly influence clients’ decision to engage them.
Practitioners feared that this would include issues of a deeply personal or private nature to prospective clients, he said.
“This could include, for instance, the practitioner's health, potentially their marital status, any problems they might be having at home, any substance abuse or addictive elements, as well as things such as an investigation by the Tax Practitioners Board which has not yet led to a conclusion,” he said.
The section would also apply retrospectively, he said, requiring disclosure of matters as far back as 1 July 2022.
Section 15 was also of concern to his constituents due to potential impact on “the relationship of confidentiality and trust that should exist between a tax practitioner or adviser and their client”.
He said it effectively forced practitioners “dob in” clients to authorities for material, false, misleading or incorrect statements in a way that would inhibit clients from having a frank conversation.
The disallowance motion, which will be moved by Liberal senator Dean Smith on 10 September, needs a majority vote to pass.
Independent senator David Pocock has hinted at the possibility of voting in favour of the motion, as reported by International Tax Review.
But the position of the Greens, who hold the balance of power in the Senate, remains unclear.
The TPB reform package that included the insertion of section 30-12 of the Tax Agent Services Act (TASA) to give the Assistant Treasurer the power to unilaterally modify the code was welcomed by Senator Barbara Pocock in a media release at the end of last year.
More recently, however, lower house MP Max Chandler-Mather wrote to Jones backing up practitioner’s concerns over the determination, calling on the government to provide clarity on the “vague and contradictory” rules.
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