Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Tax Agent Services (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009. When I started in legal practice back in 1983, the firm I worked for was a firm now known as Walker Pender in Ipswich. The day I walked in I saw people coming one after another into the offices there and I asked the senior partner: ‘Who are all these people? What are they doing? They can’t all have legal issues.’ He told me: ‘They’re people coming to get their tax affairs in order. They do this every year.’ There were farmers, small business operators, large business operators, individuals. They were registered tax agents and they were meeting people at the coalface with legal issues. From there they got their wills done and their conveyancing done, along with any other issues dealt with that caused them problems or conflict or travails in their lives.

This tax law may be esoteric, it may be a bit unsexy, but it relates to where people meet the tax office. They do not go into the Commissioner of Taxation and have meetings with him when they file their tax returns, but they do meet with their tax agent. When small business operators do their BASs they need someone who can provide them with accurate advice, collate the data and ensure that they comply with the laws, because across the whole country, and certainly in my electorate, people generally do the right thing when it comes to tax law and when it comes to doing their BAS.

The transitional provisions in this legislation really build on the national approach we have undertaken with respect to the creation of the independent Tax Practitioners Board to replace the state based systems. A lot of people think that we members of parliament come down here and fight about every issue. Sure, we have our disagreements. The member for Mayo over there and I have had plenty of disagreements about Work Choices and other issues. But the truth of the matter is that on many pieces of legislation we agree, because most people come to this place with good intentions and want to serve their local communities.

The legislation before us, the Tax Agent Services (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill, builds on the Tax Agent Services Bill, which has an impact on people’s lives almost daily, because any person who is in business knows that on a daily basis they think about their BAS.I was in business for 20 years and I know what it is like to run a business. I know it takes a lot of effort and it takes risk. I know what it does in terms of getting everything together, making sure your staff keep records on computers of what goes in and what goes out, the fees that are rendered and services that are undertaken, and making sure that you spend money appropriately in a way that is prudent and fiscally responsible. When it comes to meeting with my tax agent and talking to him about issues, I know that I want to minimise my tax, as Kerry Packer once said, but in a lawful way.

This legislation has a number of amendments. They are minor and they are technical, as the member for Casey said. They are in relation to reducing two safe harbour provisions and about making minor amendments that provide the disclosure information for the new Tax Practitioners Board under the act to the Commissioner of Taxation. They are also about ensuring a transition with respect to tax agents and those involved in BAS advice in a way that provides as little disruption as possible in the new regime.

For those people who are listening to parliament, this bill demonstrates the government’s commitment to the integrity of the tax system. It demonstrates that we want to make sure that we have a tax system in this country that works efficiently and effectively, and that provides certainty to both consumers and tax agents. We need to make sure that we have a national approach. This is an example of bipartisan cooperation with the states and territories through a COAG process that overcomes the rigidities and eccentricities of our federal system of government. I am sure many of us in this place would like to go back 100 years and give a bit of sage advice to Barton, Watson, Parkes, Fisher and Hughes, and to many of the people who were involved in the process of forming our Federation. This piece of legislation and the previous one, the substantive bill, are great examples of the COAG process working.

What are we doing with this legislation? We are establishing, as I said, a national Tax Practitioners Board. The legislation, the Tax Agents Services Bill 2008 was introduced into the parliament on 13 November 2008 and the Tax Agents Services Act 2009 received royal assent on 26 March 2009. That board is a statutory authority within the Australian Taxation Office and it requires entities that provide tax agent services and business activity statement services to be registered. And so they should. We do not want people out there who are rogues and who do not know what they are doing when they are meeting our constituents, the Australian public, every day and giving them advice. There are qualifications that must be met. There are minimum standards which we require. You do that in nearly every job whether you are a real estate agent, a lawyer, an accountant, a school teacher or a doctor. Every profession must have minimum qualifications. There are two types of registration; one being a tax agent registration and the other being a BAS agent registration. That is appropriate because people have different roles in different circumstances.

There are also character tests and there are a lot of professions as well that require character tests as well as minimum educational qualifications. It is important that people understand why we have done this. It is important for people to understand that, when it comes to a board, there needs to be a professional code of conduct because we do want people to give the highest standards of advice. There needs to be disciplinary sanctions as well in all circumstances. We cannot have people giving advice in relation to these important areas of the law without having sanction if they engage in misconduct.

The technical amendments here do provide some changes. They want to align the legislation with the government’s intention that BAS agents have sufficient though not excessive time to obtain the necessary qualifications and/or relevant experience in order to meet all the registration requirements at the time of their registration renewal. Without the amendments here, BAS agents that transition to the new regime could gain an unintended advantage by allowing their registration to lapse before they apply for re-registration and obtain a minimum three-years of registration. That is not the government’s intention.

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