CA ANZ outlines key priorities for Tax Ombudsman's 2025-26 work plan

CA ANZ has said its members are becoming increasingly frustrated with the ATO and its responsiveness in critical areas, calling on the Tax Ombudsman to step in.

Last month, the Tax Ombudsman called on the accounting community to provide feedback on its proposed work plan for systemic reviews in 2025–26.

The accounting body stressed that its members wanted the ombudsman to prioritise the ATO’s remission of general interest charge (GIC), the client-agent linking (CAL) system, compromised accounts and online services for agents (OSfA).

Susan Franks, CA ANZ tax leader, said the body was pleased to see these issues in the list of potential reviews and wanted to reiterate their importance.

“Our members are concerned about difficulties in resolving matters with the ATO in a timely manner, inconsistent and sometime aggressive approaches by the ATO, and the functionality of OSfA,” Franks said.

“These matters impose administrative costs which result in higher fees for taxpayers and/or higher costs for tax practitioners. When higher costs cannot be passed onto taxpayers, tax practitioners must make difficult decisions about disengaging clients, leaving some taxpayers without needed tax practitioner assistance.”

These specific areas were highlighted in a survey run by CA ANZ, with 66 per cent of respondents voting for the ATO’s management of emissions of GIC as a priority.

According to the body, there was “little guidance” as to how the ATO treated a request for GIC remission or practical examples; therefore needed increased focus from the ombudsman, as the ATO often provided refusals to requests with little to no reasoning.

Though the ATO was noted to be conducting an internal review of its management of remission of GIC, CA ANZ said complaints about the difficulty of obtaining GIC remissions were the most commonly received complaint from members.

“Providing the ATO with greater insights into tax practitioner concerns about the GIC remission process is highly timely and will be helpful to ensuring that proposed changes address these concerns – especially as GIC will become non-deductible from 1 July 2025 for most taxpayers,” the submission said.

The body said a review into the CAL system was also timely as “a clear, simple lining process is needed for entities that are already subject to this process and before the ATO carries out its plans to roll out CAL to individuals, sole traders and entities without an ABN.”

In addition, once the second tranche of the anti-money laundering provisions was extended to accountants, client-agent identification and linking processes may need to be applied to all clients, underlining the necessity of a review, as it would help reduce the “already substantial” administrative burden on tax practitioners.

To ensure that the ATO, the TPB and anti-money laundering identification requirements were consistent, CA ANZ recommended that the ombudsman liaise with the Australian National Audit Office about its review into the progress, design and functionality of the Digital Identity System implementation.

The Ombudsman previously conducted a report into tax identity and fraud and the ATO’s responses to this; however, according to the accounting body, further work was required to resolve ongoing issues that tax practitioners and their clients experienced.

“Our members welcome a further review of the ATO’s management of compromised accounts focusing on prevention and recovery,” Franks said.

“A priority area includes reviewing the status and effectiveness of the ATO’s responses to the previous Taxation Ombudsman’s recommendations, especially the alternate options suggested by the ATO.”

Finally, the submission noted there was a need to review OSfA as it was the preferred tool for members when dealing with the Tax Office based on its availability.

Franks said its members wanted to be able to quickly generate client lists for debt, access all tax information, more details on the status of tax returns, reasons for delays, an estimated time for resolution and the ability to provide additional information to expedite the process.

Agents were noted to value an online chat function to make GIC remission requests and other queries, as well as two-way practice mail.

These would reduce the burden on the ATO registered phone line and ease the administrative load on tax practitioners.

“Ensuring that tax practitioners can operate efficiently and effectively helps the government to fund the essential services that it provides,” Franks said.

“Our members appreciate the TO undertaking the current reviews into the effectiveness of the ATO’s registered agent phone line and ATO letters and written communications.”