Compliance program 2010-11

Changing regulatory environment

Tax Practitioners Board

• The Tax Practitioners Board commenced on 1 March 2010 with Mr. Dale Boucher as the inaugural chair and an ATO-appointed secretary, Mr. Mark Maskell

Ongoing assurance and integrity

• To 28 February 2010, we had completed almost 200 investigations of registered and unregistered tax practitioners. We referred 41 cases to the state-based Tax Agent Boards for consideration. We prosecuted 12 registered and unregistered preparers.
• We referred 27 approved auditors of self-managed superannuation funds to their professional association for failing to carry out or adequately perform the duties of an approved auditor.

Tax practitioner integrity service

• We received more than 860 phones calls to the tax practitioner integrity service, up from 420 the previous year, resulting in 40 unregistered agent and 34 registered tax agent cases being examined. We referred three cases to the state based Tax Agent Boards for consideration and four were prosecuted. The main issues of concern raised by the tax practitioner community were taxpayer compliance, fraud and evasion and identity crime.

Sections within Snapshot of our 2009-10 activities

• Introduction
• Individuals
• Micro Enterprises
• Small-to-medium enterprises
• Large businesses
• Non-profit organisations
• Government organisations
• Tax practitioners
• Changing regulatory environment
• Serious abuse of the tax and superannuation systems