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I'm here with Michael Monaghan today to find out what's been happening in the ATO and to
find out where the future of tax practitioners is going.
Hi Michael, thank you for joining us today. Last time we met you spoke about how you were
going out to visit some tax practitioners, could you tell us a little bit how that's
gone?
So since I've been in this job I've taken the chance to go and talk to a wide range
of practitioners and professional bodies, and key players in the system. I've found
that really rewarding and I've probably, I hopefully, I've sort of covered a broad range
of people including a big forum in Launceston.
So I'm trying to understand what's driving their world, what is that they see, and so
we can actually then use that information to work together to improve the system.
So the sorts of things that people are saying is that they're very concerned about the lack
of young kids coming into the profession, the broader accounting profession not just
tax practitioners.
That's driven a lot perhaps by the complexity of tax work these days, it's actually very
hard work. The sort of thing we have to think about and to try and address.
There also a lot of things happening around getting work done all over the world, and
interestingly that's turning even smaller practices into entities that need global services,
so they're sort of starting to mirror their client's situation. So a lot of very fascinating
things so it's been a great exercise.
The Commissioner's have been talking about providing more contemporary services, when
do you think tax professionals will start to experience these new services?
Part of what we're doing with practitioners is trying to understand better about how they
actually go about their business so that when we start to build what we're calling contemporary
services, that is services that are appropriate for this current time, we actually understand
how we can be helpful to them because at the end of the day we're trying to make life easier
for them so that they can help their clients better.
So we're starting to see already work around trying to make the way they lodge tax returns,
in the sense of lodgment and working with their clients, where computers can talk to
each other.
Think about the world where you the practitioner and your client's computers can actually interact
with each other and what does that open up for business opportunities?
As part of that whole deal we've started to look at well what's the future of the portal?
We're really all about trying to improve the functionality that people get from the portal
as it's called.
There probably won't be a portal in the way it looks now, it will be probably be another
sort of interaction on the computer that agents will have available to them, but they're the
very conversations that we're starting to have.
In July this year we launched a new website and I know in your last conversation you acknowledged
that there were some teething problems and that we're going to work on this. What's been
done so far?
One of the things that's important to know about that is that we really had to modernise
the sort of technical infrastructure for the website. So it did produce some improved user
interfaces, user reactions for people, but really that what the main game is still to
come if you like. The big improvements are still to come.
We sort of like had to get it to a point where it was capable of being improved. So I think
some of the disappointment perhaps is people were expecting a much more wiz *** website
itself which I'm sure will come, but as I said, getting to this point was really to
get that technical infrastructure sorted out.
But what we saw was some things that we perhaps we didn't quite appreciate how important they
were for practitioners, so I put in place a joint ATO industry little working group,
a good example of the new way of consulting, we had the space to actually say ok, let's
get the right people together, focus on this. And really, all the issues I think that people
had around the early time are being worked through pretty well, the biggest one seems
to be the printing function and there's been really good progress has been made.
But as I say, it probably wouldn't have happened so quickly but if it wasn't for the space
we had to get some practitioners, ATO experts together and work it out, so that's been a
good example of consultation.
Thanks Michael, and how can people keep up to date with what's happening?
Well again in terms of helping practitioners we have looked at the way we communicate with
them. We've come up with a new idea to have an online news service which provides them
more up to date information, and even material like this, and other people sort of providing
interactive ways to get messages across to practitioners and practitioners can always
come through the liaison areas that we have.
There's a special website which is ato-taxagents@ato.gov.au and that's a way that practitioners can keep
up to speed with the latest stuff. From my point of view I'm going as part of
talking to practitioners, I really am looking at a fairly substantial improvement to the
way that we communicate with them. The consistency of the messages and the value that they get
from it, so that will be more next year but that's something that we're certainly aiming
for.
Is there anything else you'd like to add Michael?
I do really value the constructive way that practitioners and their representatives have
engaged with us and with myself, and I think that's a really important way to run the tax
system is to actually do it in a collaborative way so I appreciate very much their efforts.
Tax
Time has been a great success you know and a lot of it's due to the professionalism of
the practitioners who are in the system. So hopefully people will get out and have
a bit of a break over Christmas which is coming around very quickly, and next year we can
work on building on the platform of consultation that we're putting in place.
Thanks very much for your time today Michael.
Thank you.