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The association has urged the Inspector-General of Taxation and Ombudsman to prioritise a review into client-agent linking to rectify “serious deficiencies” within the system.
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NTAA pushes for ‘urgent review into CAL deficiencies’
24 October 2024
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The National Tax & Accountants’ Association has joined other industry bodies in calling for the Inspector-General of Taxation and Taxation Ombudsman (IGTO) to undertake a review of client-agent linking (CAL) within the coming year.
In response to the IGTO’s consultation on its draft work plans, the NTAA said CAL continues to negatively impact a broad section of the community with the association having received over 500 written complaints about CAL from registered tax agents.
In a recent submission, the NTAA said that other avenues for changing the CAL system had already been exhausted.
“The former IGTO noted that the CAL-related problem was one that the ATO and tax agents should be able to resolve between themselves, adding that if the problem could not be solved, the IGTO was happy to ‘jump in’,” the NTAA said.
“The NTAA and other professional associations have exhausted all efforts to bring about positive change. However, despite best efforts, no practical changes have been made from the ATO’s end and, therefore, problems persist.
“The NTAA is of the view that positive change can be achieved via a timely IGTO review.”
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The CAL system was originally introduced to improve cyber security, including preventing situations in which a tax agent or a taxpayer’s identity is stolen by criminals.
“Unfortunately, any benefit achieved in this regard comes at an enormous cost to the tax community due to some serious deficiencies in how CAL has been rolled out to certain taxpayers,” the NTAA said.
“CAL was rolled out to small to medium-sized businesses, excluding sole traders, in November 2023, and since then, the NTAA has received an unprecedented volume of negative feedback from our members regarding CAL.”
The NTAA said some of the more serious concerns are that CAL is cumbersome and confusing, creating an ongoing administrative nightmare for tax agents.
It also noted that taxpayers need to work through multiple complicated systems to appoint a tax agent, including myGov, myGovID App, Relationship Authorisation Manager and the ATO’s online services for businesses.
The association has also slammed the ATO’s response times, with feedback from its members indicating that current ATO resourcing is inadequate to deal with CAL-related queries, leading to further frustration for tax agents.
“This is evidenced by the excessive wait times on the ATO registered agent phone line and the reporting of instances where the ATO was unable to assist taxpayers and tax agents with their CAL-related queries, as discussed further below,” the NTAA said.
“We expect that these issues will compound over time, with further ATO resources required to administer and enforce increasing overdue lodgments and outstanding payments where clients have been unable to engage with their chosen registered tax agent in a timely manner.”
The NTAA also warned that it is already hearing that some taxpayers wishing to appoint a new tax agent are choosing to retain their existing tax agent simply to avoid having to engage with CAL.
“The difficulty of navigating CAL may ultimately cause some taxpayers to choose to disengage from the tax system.”
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