The Australian government has issued a new bill designed to extend the regulation of the tax advisory industry. The draft Tax Laws Amendment (Tax Agent Services) Bill 2007 and associated draft Tax Administration Amendment Regulations create a new regulatory regime for tax practitioners.

Revenue minister Peter Dutton said: “The draft bill and regulations will improve the registration and regulation of tax practitioners, providing benefits for both providers of tax agent services and people who use these services. Tax practitioners will benefit from increased consistency in registration and appropriate, but flexible, regulation.”

The key features of the new rules are:
• the establishment of a national tax practitioners board, replacing the existing state based boards;
• a legislated code of professional conduct that governs the provision of tax agent services; a wider range of disciplinary sanctions available to the new board, including a civil penalty for certain serious misconduct by tax practitioners;
• registration and regulation of business activity statement (BAS) service providers; and
• a safe harbour for taxpayers from tax shortfall penalties for making false or misleading statements, where a taxpayer demonstrates that they have taken reasonable care by engaging a registered tax practitioner and providing the tax practitioner with all relevant taxation information.

In this week's Budget, treasury minister Peter Costello announced tax cuts for the majority of Australians. The government will lift income-tax thresholds, putting four out of five Australians on a 30 per cent rate at a cost of A$31.5 billion over the next four years.