Yesterday we had a visit from the Tax Man. Actually whilst Rebecca is from the Tax Office, she’s definitely not a man. To use the now well worn oxymoron about being politically correct (show me anything correct politically!) we should say the Tax Inspector arrived at our doorstep.
However that’s not quite correct, since she is from the Australian Taxation Office, on another mission. Not to try to catch us out, or undertake an audit. She was here to try to understand what bookkeepers do!
The ATO have created a dilemma, that they are now looking to solve. I guess that’s what being a public servant is all about. Utilising the tax payers money to look busy creating problems to then establish committees, working groups and departments in which to put together a structure to try to solve the aforementioned problem.
Where does that leave the public?
Who knows? Except that the various public servants then require a salary, and have to justify their existence, and then ask the tax payer to dig deeper into their already very shallow and empty pockets to fund the aforementioned series of events.
The cost of sending out a Tax Inspector
What is the cost to the ATO of sending out a representative to the offices of bookkeepers to try to establish how bookkeepers fit in the industry?
These days bookkeeping seems to be totally geared on producing reports that bookkeepers then present to their clients, their clients accountants, and then to the tax office so that our clients can have the privilegde of paying out yet more hard earned funds.
Bookkeepers are (indirectly) working for the ATO
As the “Simplified Tax System” required “simplified reporting” (BAS) monthly or quarterly, suddenly the business community overloaded accountants and tax agents with bookwork to submit the BAS. So the accountants and tax agents engaged the services of bookkeepers. Others recommended that their clients engage bookkeepers to do their bookkeeping.
Then the ATO realised that in effect the bookkeeping was really to undertake the reporting for the ATO, which meant that bookkeepers were acting as tax agents.
Woops!! no one except registered tax agents and accountants are legally in a position to undertake matters of taxation. So that ATO agreed that bookkeepers could do the bookkeeping, so long as they didn’t prepare the relevant documentation for the BAS.
That’s fine to state. So we contacted the ATO to ask at what stage does bookkeeping stop being simple bookkeeping, and suddenly become “the preparation of documentation relevant for the BAS reporting”?
This question has not been answered by the tax office.
Too Be Continued ..
Next BAS due
