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Ongoing discussions and consultations with tax professionals and professional bodies are essential to us fully understanding how the tax and superannuation systems are operating in practice. Peak forums include the Chief Executive Officers (CEO's) Forum, National Tax Liaison Group (NTLG), Superannuation Consultative Committee and the ATO Tax Practitioner Forum (ATPF). Together with the 22 sub-groups that exist to support those peak forums (such as the Lodgment Working Group), the level of engagement is essential to ensuring effective and sustainable administrative arrangements.
We will continue to work closely with these forums during 2008-09 to ensure that we live our consultative, collaborative and co-design values and work with the tax profession to foster a greater sense of 'co-owning' the administration of the tax system. In addition, to provide us with a greater insight on the impacts of our administration on legal practitioners who work in the tax field, we established a Legal Practitioner Consultative Forum which will hold its inaugural meeting in 2008-09.
This year we have worked with some 900 tax practitioners on consultation and co-design projects and invited 3,700 tax and accounting professionals and 2,000 bookkeepers to participate in our surveys. Through our consultative forums a significant number of issues have been managed including:
- Two ATO Practice Statements have been released to provide guidance on the practical administration of promoter penalty laws and three new draft rulings on shortfall penalties have been released for comment.
- A discussion paper on intra-group finance guarantees and loans (relating to the transfer pricing rules) was released for comment.
- Initial discussions were held between tax practitioners and Centrelink on the agency's measures that impact on tax practitioners.
- The provision of pre-filling data for tax returns has been improved and expanded, and a feedback service will be introduced to allow practitioners to provide real time feedback on issues.
- Strong progress has been made towards resolving the top 10 digital certificate irritants raised by tax agents.
This focus on consultation and co-design will continue during 2008-09 on a range of both technical and administrative issues.
Approved auditors of SMSFs play a critical role in maintaining the health and integrity of the superannuation system. We have been working closely with industry to influence the recently introduced minimum competency standards for SMSF auditors and to develop an electronic auditor tool (eSAT), which will help identify issues and report contraventions. We are expecting to pilot the tool from July to October 2008 with a small representative group of approved auditors. We are also improving our data on approved auditors to enhance our ability to identify areas of risk.
Self-managed superannuation funds
In 2008-09 we will undertake approximately 900 reviews and audits of approved auditors of SMSFs, including:
- reviews that include a 'helping to comply' strategy for those new to the role
- audits, reviews and tailored advice activities to gain assurance that approved auditors of SMSFs apply both auditing standards and regulatory requirements
- reviews of large auditing practices to provide assurance that they have effective internal controls in place to ensure high quality audits.
Sections within Tax practitioners
Last Modified: Wednesday, 13 August 2008