Coalition will revisit TASA post-election, if necessary
The Federal Opposition will seek to achieve a delay to the Tax Agent Services Act on floor of the Parliament this week, but if that fails it will revisit the issue if it gains Government at the 14 September Federal election.
Coalition Parliamentarians who are members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee (PJC) which reviewed the TASA legislation produced a dissenting report calling for a 12-month delay with respect to its impacts on financial planners. Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Senator Mathias Cormann, said the matter will now be fought on the floor of the Parliament.
"Our priority now is to work with the Independents to stop the Government locking in bad legislation with many important issues unresolved," he said. "We are calling on the Government to extend the current exemption until 30 June 2014, so that the changes to bring financial planners and advisers into the tax agents regime can be more properly considered through a proper process.
"We want to ensure that those changes in the end are balanced and appropriately targeted. Depending on how successful or unsuccessful we are with that out of Opposition, we would revisit this in Government to ensure a more sensible and appropriate balance is struck," Cormann said.
"The Gillard government's handling of these proposed TASA changes has been typically chaotic, disjointed and incompetent. We don't think those changes should go ahead at this point. It is completely inappropriate to expect people to comply with a new regulatory regime which hasn't even been legislated yet, with less than two weeks notice," he said.
The financial services industry has expressed its broad disappointment with the PJC's report on the TASA legislation which, apart from some minor concessions around disclaimers across a six-month transition period, cleared the way for the bill to pass the House of Representatives.
Reflecting the mood of the planning industry, Financial Services Council (FSC) chief executive John Brogden said the committee report had largely ignored very clear evidence from the FSC, Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) and the Financial Planning Association (FPA) that the legislation "will create havoc for financial advisers".
He said the FSC would now push ahead with attempts to have the legislation amended in the Parliament by the Coalition and independents.
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Mike Taylor
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