Do you need to be registered with the Tax Practitioners Board?

There are already over 20,000 tax (financial) advisers registered with the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB). Are you one of them?

Many Australian financial services (AFS) licensees, individual authorised representatives (ARs) and corporate authorised representatives (CARs) advise their clients about the tax consequences of the financial advice they provide.

If this sounds like your situation and that advice is being provided for a fee or reward (even if that fee or reward is provided to a third party in the first instance), then your AFS licensee, individual AR and CAR must be registered with the TPB as a tax (financial) adviser.

However, there are some exceptions that do not require an AFS licensee, individual AR or CAR to register with the TPB as a tax (financial) adviser. These include if: 

• you are already registered with the TPB as a tax agent you do not need to register separately as a tax (financial) adviser
• you only provide general advice (that is, you do not provide any personal advice)
• you only provide advice in relation to general insurance products, such as home or car insurance, and 
• you are a mortgage broker.

While we have covered off whether AFS licensees, individual ARs and CARs need to be registered with the TPB, you might be asking whether employee representatives need to also be registered. While employee representatives do advise on the tax consequences of the financial advice they provide, employees do not need to be registered with the TPB as the salary or wage that they receive is not considered to be a fee or reward. However, employee representatives may be registered for the purpose of a company or partnership meeting the ‘sufficient number’ registration requirement.

Now you know who needs to register, how do you register? There are two available registration options for you to register under:

• transitional option, available only until 30 June 2017
• standard option.

We strongly encourage anyone needing to register to consider the benefits of applying under the transitional option before 30 June 2017.

Ian R Taylor

More information

• TPB registration for financial planners and advisers
• Registration renewal for tax (financial) advisers