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Accounting bodies slammed for poor lobby efforts
Following the ATO’s final position on event-based reporting, BGL’s managing director says he was “unimpressed” by the lack of lobbying action undertaken by some of the major accounting bodies.
After months of contention, event-based reporting for SMSFs was settled in early November, requiring more regular reporting for funds with total superannuation account balances of $1 million or more.
Mr Lesh feels the lobbying efforts were left to industry stakeholders as opposed to the associations, particularly in the fight for ensuring only SMSFs in danger of breaching the transfer balance cap were affected.
“The SMSF Association were great and they supported us and helped us all the way through that process. The Institute of Public Accountants also got involved very soon after,” Mr Lesh said.
“But Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ) and CPA were nowhere to be found, and I was incredibly disappointed. I told them so,” he said.
“I would have thought that the industry associations would have been the first ones jumping up and down for their members saying, ‘Hey, this is not good for our members. We need to rethink this.’
“I was just really unimpressed. I would have expected that they would have been the first one to ask their members, ‘how does this affect you?’”
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