Financial planners who are looking to membership of the Financial Planning Association (FPA) or the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) to ensure recognition by the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB) as registered tax practitioners may find themselves cut adrift in future.
The TPB has told the Treasury that it no longer believes that it should be recognising professional associations because it does not have the resources or funding to ensure their compliance.
In a submission to the Treasury’s review of the TPB, the board said while it recognised that tax practitioners and their associations were key stakeholders, it was no longer comfortable with existing arrangements.
However, the TPB said it was open to grandfathering for existing tax practitioners.
“…the TPB is of the view that is it is no longer suitable for the TPB to recognise professional associations,” it said.
“Recognition provides the voting members of recognised associations with an additional avenue to become registered as tax practitioners,” the submission said. “If this registration avenue was to be removed, the TPB would support that those tax practitioners who had been registered under the pathway relevant to their recognised professional association should be permanently grandfathered into TPB registration.”
The TPB explained its reasoning for ending the professional associations pathway saying it had limited capacity/capability to “test and assess whether a recognised professional association complies, both initially and in an ongoing sense, with the requirements to become recognised”.
“In circumstances where an association lacks or loses appropriate governance, the TPB has little it may do by way of remediation,” it said.
“However, in these situations where the association is subject to little oversight, the TPB could be seen as a regulator and thereby carry substantial reputational risk.
“While carrying this risk, the TPB charges no fees to associations for this recognition. By way of contrast, the Professional Standards Council, which provides limited liability services to professionals by registering their associations, charges fees to associations in the order of $3 million to $4 million per year.”
Comments
And yet another nail appears to seal the FPA’s coffin of irrelevance. FPA code of ethics? Gone. Education standards? Gone. Disciplinary role? All but gone. My membership next year ? Gone. The price you pay for hopping into bed with the majors and accomodating their demands, They simply saw the CFP as a marketing tag and nothing else. The FPA lowered the standards to accept the dross the majors had on board and that’s why it’s where it is today.
oh but what do you mean?
you mean an adviser is actually going to do a Gd. dip fin plan or m.fin plan, sit an ethics exam and then not join the fpa, who issues (under license) the worlds highest designation deemed to be worth 2 credits by the standard setter ?
you are a tall poppy basher aren't you? yes, you are. yes you are.
Why is the TPB getting bogged down in submissions about how best to manage financial adviser association recognition? The TPB should be trying to withdraw from any involvement in financial adviser regulation whatsoever. The TPB's resources should be purely focused on their core job of tax agent regulation.
Financial advisers are now more than adequately regulated via FASEA, ASIC, Austrac, AFCA and the imminent Hayne/Frydenberg disciplinary body. If the TPB is more interested in costly empire building than doing their core job, then the government needs to clean out and refocus the TPB.
Time to get rid of this useless, expensive, unnecessary, unruly regulator for advisers. It does nothing but suck fees from advisers, increase fees to consumers through unnecessary compliance and it just wastes everyone's time. The only benefit are to the salaried employees inside the TPB who are employed as a result of the TFA requirement. If ever there was a useless bureaucracy to eliminate first for advisers, this is it. Advisers now have FASEA and a Code Monitoring Body coming up, I challenge anyone to make a valid case for this regulator for advisers. Treasury Report on the matter seems to agree about this as well. Time to lobby your local member about this dogs breakfast, easy win for advisers and politicians with no consumer detriment whatsoever.
The TPB are the ultimate fee for no service business. Just get rid of them.
FFS what was the point of going through all this, and then the TPB says do not have the resources or funding to ensure compliance. What did we pay all that money for? What a joke. Get rid of them, because clearly they are useless, but had no qualms about taking advisers fees. How many millions did they take for doing nothing?
Seriously? This is another money grab or obstruction for planners of the future from gaining appropriate membership to do their job. In reality these clowns should be arguing that the requirement for planners to be 'tax professionals' is insane and let's cut the BS red tape garrote that is strangling this nation and our profession!
Membership of TPB is just a blatant tax levy and nothing more. I'm studying a $500 tax course now with the intention of resigning from the FPA this year. Paying $1,000 a year for tea and scones at an annual FPA conference is not good financial planning and it's not fair clients pay for these expenses. I studied for the CFP but it's a waste. If I can cut my costs and stay relevant with Apps and Industry Super fund advice pricing by leaving the FPA then yep. Goodbye FPA.
god bless you Adam. I call on all advisers to do the same as Adam. it's very easy to complete the Tax study
give the FPA what they deserve, a kick in the teeth.
their day of reckoning is coming July 2020.
god bless,
v.Smart FP
Adam, what is the course you are doing? Sounds good.
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