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The Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) has deregistered the Association of Taxation & Management Accountants (ATMA), potentially leaving some members unauthorised to provide tax agent services.
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TPB cancels accounting association's registration
07 April 2015
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8 minute read
ATMA was deregistered by the TPB earlier this year.
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Speaking to AccountantsDaily, ATMA president Bob Duncan said the deregistration is the result of “some administrative issues” and he is hopeful they will be resolved within the next two months.
Mr Duncan said, however, that the TPB's decision to deregister ATMA will affect the ability of some members to provide tax agent services.
Members who gained their tax agent's registration through their ATMA registration may need to join another professional association to remain authorised.
“For the majority of our members it’s not going to affect them, but there were about 39 members that were affected, whose registration was based purely and simply on ATMA membership,” he said.
Mr Duncan said he suspects most of those 39 have already joined another body, but added that the TPB’s decision has also cost ATMA other members.
“Unfortunately, a few people, when they got the email from the Tax Practitioners Board went into panic mode as people do when they see things which frighten them. Rather than talk to us, they went into panic mode, some of them, and joined another association.
“So far we are only aware of about five or six that have resigned over it but obviously there is going to be more."
Mr Duncan expressed disappointment with the TPB’s handling of the matter.
“We got a letter from them [the TPB], which we responded to, and when we finally got the letter back from them it was dated 23 December 2014; we received it on 5 January 2015 and the deregistration was from 6 January 2015,” Mr Duncan said.
“I was a bit disappointed ... We didn’t have an opportunity to speak to anybody; all we did was respond to a letter that they wrote to us and we thought we adequately responded. They obviously wanted some additional information and I would have thought they would have come back to us and said, ‘we need this and we need this’ - which we would have provided - but they didn’t.”
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