Terms and conditions

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Important Update: Enhancements to Professional Standards for Tax Practitioners

As a registered Tax Agent and Chartered Accountant, we are committed to maintaining the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and ethical conduct. Recent updates to the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 (TASA) and the Code of Professional Conduct (effective 1 August 2024) introduce important changes that affect the tax profession. These updates were developed to further enhance the professionalism, accountability, and public trust in tax practitioners.

Key Changes Under the New Code of Professional Conduct (Effective 1 August 2024)

The Tax Agent Services (Code of Professional Conduct) Determination 2024 introduces a range of changes to ensure tax practitioners uphold the highest ethical standards. The new obligations are aimed at ensuring that tax agents and BAS agents act with integrity, competence, and diligence in all dealings with clients, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), and other stakeholders.

Tax Agent Services

We operate as registered Tax Agents and are therefore bound by the Code of Conduct as issued by the Taxation Practitioners Board (“TPB”). 

The TPB maintains the register of all current registered, suspended or deregistered Tax and BAS Agents in Australia. Only registered tax agents can provide tax services. The validity and status of our registration can be checked here using Tax Agent Number 26213353 https://www.tpb.gov.au/public-register.

Part of our commitment as Tax Agents is to inform you of any matters which may significantly influence your decision to accept this engagement. There are currently no known matters to disclose however if there are any factors you would like to confirm or reassess, please contact us to discuss prior to signing this engagement letter. 

Identify Verification

Prior to accepting the engagement, we may be required to verify your identity for the purposes of the anti-money laundering laws or other “know your client” laws. We may request from you such information as we require for these purposes, make searches of appropriate databases and disburse any of the costs involved to you.

Our obligations

We have a duty to act in your best interests, unless this duty is inconsistent with our duty to act in the public interest. 

We are responsible for maintaining records for a period of at least five-years unless otherwise required by legislation.

We own all materials produced by us that resulted from our skill and attention to the extent that the materials produced by us incorporate any original materials you give to us. This may include that we will maintain copies of your documents and records on our files and these, along with the files and working papers, will remain our property. 

We are obliged to consider whether our clients create any threats to compliance with our Fundamental Principles and where we cannot reduce the risk to an acceptable level, we are obliged to decline or cease the client engagement. We have the right to exercise this at our discretion. 

We will comply with the professional and ethical standards of the Accounting Professional and Ethical Standards Board, available at apesb.org.au. This includes APES 110 Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants (including Independence Standards), which among other things contains provisions that apply if we become aware of any actual or potential ‘non-compliance with governing laws or regulations’ (NOCLAR). Where any such non-compliance poses substantial harm (such as serious adverse consequences to investors, creditors, employees, auditor, group auditor or the public), we may be required to disclose the matter to an appropriate authority. 

Your obligations

Our work will be based solely on the information provided, the circumstances and facts made known to us and the assumptions set out in our correspondence. You are responsible for the reliability, accuracy and completeness of the particulars and information provided to us. You are responsible for full disclosure of all relevant information. We rely on you to bring to our attention as soon as possible any changes in the information as it was originally presented as it may impact on our advice.

Despite the information and records provided to or maintained by us, you are responsible for retaining any records for as long as legally required.

We may correspond with you or any parties within your group. We will accept instructions from any party however, if there is a contradiction, this will be raised with all involved. If you only want us to accept instructions from specific parties, please inform us of this immediately. 

You may only rely on our final written deliverables. If you wish to rely on verbal or draft advice we have provided, please let us know so that we can prepare a written deliverable on which you may rely. 

Only the parties to this engagement may rely on our advice. If a third party requires reliance on this advice, we will require them to agree to accept the terms of this engagement and to acknowledge that the advice may not have been prepared in relation to their particular circumstances. A separate letter of reliance can be prepared in this instance.

Confidentiality
We have an ethical duty of confidentiality, which means we must not share or disclose your details to anyone, except as otherwise specified in this clause, without your consent unless required to by law.

We may disclose your personal and confidential information details, as part of our working papers of the services provided to you to CAANZ for the purposes of conducting any review or assessment aimed at maintaining industry professional standards. Any such disclosure of confidential information does not change any of our commitments to safeguard your information, and the information remains subject to any existing confidentiality obligations. We advise you by signing this letter you acknowledge, our engagement files relating to this assessment will be made available under this program.

We may collect Personal Information about you, your representatives, your clients and others when we provide services to you. If we do, you agree to work with us to ensure that we both meet the obligations that we each may have under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (as amended) ("Privacy Act"). The obligations may include notifying the relevant person to whom the personal information relates who we are and how we propose to use their personal information. Where you have collected personal information, you confirm that you have collected the personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act, that you are entitled to provide this personal information to us and that we may use and disclose the personal information for the purpose/s we provide our services to you. We will handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act. 

Third Party Involvement

We may from time to time engage third party specialist professionals and other public practitioners, where warranted to obtain the advice you need or to assist us to provide our service to you. These may include cloud service providers and outsourced service providers. Any cost as incurred for these external services will be quoted and approved by you before being incurred. 

In providing our services to you, we utilise cloud computing and softwares provided by which is based in Australia and we rely on their security measures. We also store client information in a data server managed in Australia which may subject to Australian privacy law.

Limitation of Liability

We are members of the Chartered Accounts Australia & New Zealand (CAANZ). Where CAANZ schemes have been approved under professional standards legislation in force in Australia, our liability in connection with the services is limited in accordance with those CAANZ schemes.

Where our liability is not limited by a scheme, you agree that our liability in respect of all claims you may have against us however arising in connection with our engagement (whether direct or indirect, in contract, tort, equity, under statute or otherwise) is limited to an amount equal to five times the fee (excluding GST) payable for our services under this engagement letter. You may not recover from us any amount with respect to any consequential, incidental, indirect or special loss (including loss of profit or data or damage to goodwill) in connection with any claim you may have against us. These limitations will not apply to any liability which cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. 

Disputes and complaints

If you have any concerns about our costs or services, that have not been resolved after your first attempt, please detail this in writing with our office so it can be reviewed and addressed in detail. 

If you are still not satisfied with the response, you are entitled to escalate your complaint to:

Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand 

https://www.charteredaccountantsanz.com/about-us/complaints/complaints-about-a-member

Taxation Practitioners Board 

https://www.tpb.gov.au/complaints