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Key concerns identified in mainly favourable performance review of tax agent engagement by the office.
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ATO needs to improve staff capability, says audit office
17 August 2022
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The ATO should consult with tax practitioners to improve its phone line and one in four agents said staff capability falls short, according to a report from the Australian National Audit Office.
The performance audit, which focused on the ATO’s engagement with tax practitioners, found key shortfalls in its operational and technical functions, and recommends the office work “to better understand” agent concerns.
Among other recommendations were that the ATO “more clearly link strategies to its tax practitioner engagement objectives” and that it should “develop a performance framework” to assess how well it was achieving engagement.
The ATO accepted all the recommendations and said it was “pleased the audit recognises the strength of our approach to consultation and the services and support we offer to tax practitioners”.
The report, which was mainly positive about the ATO, found it “has a largely effective approach to consulting tax practitioners to inform the development of its strategy, services and support”.
With most questions prompting 4,000-5,000 responses, the report found 61 per cent of tax practitioners said the ATO worked effectively with them while just 11 per cent said it was ineffective.
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Regarding areas that need improvement, 20 per cent of tax agents and 31 per cent of BAS agents had no specific concerns and said the ATO should “keep doing what they are doing”.
The most negative findings concerned the phone line, capability of support staff or understanding of tax practitioners, with a total of 49 per cent specifying one of those as the area they would most like the ATO to improve.
Also, more than four out of 10 tax agents were also only “a little confident” or “not confident at all” that the ATO “genuinely considers the input of agents”.
Melbourne tax specialist John Jeffreys said many tax agents would be disappointed with the ANAO findings because they were “angry and frustrated with the ATO”.
“My experience of the average tax agent and the findings of the ANAO don’t seem to align,” he said.
“My experience has been that the grass root problems of practitioners with ATO systems and personnel are not being heard to any great extent. Tax agents are frustrated because there seems to be no path to solving the never-ending issues they experience.
“The recommendations of the ANAO don’t give me any confidence that the problems tax agents experience are going to be fixed any time soon.”
BDO tax partner Mark Molesworth said the goals of the audit would miss the mark for many practitioners, but it highlighted some common complaints.
“Any practitioners hoping for an in-depth review of the one-to-one interactions between the ATO and themselves will generally be disappointed – this was not the purpose of the report,” Mr Molesworth said.
“However, there was some identified room for improvement with the skill level of ATO officers staffing the phone line. This is a common refrain among practitioners – the person on the phone from the ATO often can’t help and must ‘escalate’ the enquiry – leading to wasted time and double handling.
“Commonly we hear of information being provided to the ATO, appearing to drop into a black hole of ‘escalation’ and ‘referral to experts’ for six months or more, and then practitioners being pressured to answer queries in two or four week time frames.”
He said the finding that fewer than half of participants expressed confidence in the ATO’s approach to consultations “should be of grave concern”.
“If half of those engaged enough to give up their time and participate in consultations are not sure that their opinion is valued, there is surely an issue that needs to be addressed,” Mr Molesworth said.
The senior manager of tax policy at CPA Australia, Elinor Kasapidis, said the minority who were unhappy with the ATO represented a problem it needed to solve.
“It is a concern that more than 10 per cent actually disagree with statements like ‘the ATO kept me informed’, ‘gave me clear and accurate information’ ‘found the right area’ or were ‘timely’,” Ms Kasapidis said.
“We do hear issues like this coming from our members, particularly when inquiries might be a little bit unusual or on the more complex side, or where there is a change of staff.
“That 10 per cent is really an area for the ATO to look into to see what’s happening there and if it’s got a systemic issue.”
The timing of the survey on the tail end of the pandemic might have influenced the results, Ms Kasapidis said, with the ATO suffering resource constraints in the same manner as other businesses.
But she said the high response rate meant the ANAO could be confident that it got a good insight into the overall sentiment of tax practitioners.
“While there are always areas for improvement, it’s really about understanding what’s driving the negative results,” Ms Kasapidis said.
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