With the proposed legislation to clean up the bookkeeping industry, who are the winners? Will it be small business owners (whom apparently the legislation is designed to protect?) Will it be training organisations who will suddenly have an influx of bookkeepers seeking a qualification?
On reading the draft documentation it appears that experienced bookkeepers will have to go back to school to be taught what bookeepers already know by people who do not really know what they are teaching because they are not involved in the industry every day.
To get a piece of paper to prove that experienced bookkeepers can do what experienced bookkeepers have already been doing. (In some cases, far better than “qualified accountants”). You have probably met bookkeepers (and trainee accountants) that have undertaken such courses and still have no idea about bookkeeping basics, so why will a piece of paper qualify them to become BAS Service Providers more than established bookkeepers who have the experience and knowledge but not the piece of paper?
The ATO does not really know what bookkeepers do
The Australian Taxation Office have been consulted by the Treasury department, however, a representative of the ATO come to visit us because “the ATO does not really know what bookkeepers do”.
There appears to be little mention in the proposed legislation about the advances in accounting software; that in fact it generates all the information required for a BAS lodgement. That at the push of a button a BAS lodgement is generated.
There seems to be no clear definition of the “thin line in the sand” between data entry and generating a BAS form.
In the real world, if unregistered bookkeepers continue to do what you’re already doing and in accordance with the proposed legislation submitted the information to a Regstered BAS Service Providers (BSP), then don’t you think that all that BSP will do is take our figures and put them in the right boxes on a BAS lodgement?
Can you really see them checking all our work? If they were to do that then they wouldn’t need unregistered bookkeepers, so you’d become redundant. However, they would then outsource bookkeeping services to the likes of unregistered bookkeepers. They wouldn’t have time to check the work, and they would know that thge work would be correct anyway, so what will the new legislation have proved?
Will it have got rid of the cowboys? Do You really think so!!!
Does the Treasury department really think that accountants / BSPs will duplicate the work unregistered bookkeepers have already done to submit a BAS form?
So, what is the definition of the “thin line in the sand” between data entry and generating a BAS form.
If you speak to any number of accountants and registered tax agents, they’ll tell you they’re just not interested in doing BAS lodgements, and are very happy that experienced bookkeepers can provide their clients with such a service.
Contact us and let us know what you think
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