SUITE 601 180-186 BURWOOD ROAD BURWOOD New South Wales 2134
Other records
Expiry date
01/03/2025
Condition
Sanctions
None on record
Appeal
Board decision
CXL Reason
Disqualification
None on record
Suspension
<strong>Date of Effect:</strong> 22/06/2023 to 22/09/2023<br/><strong>Reason:</strong> 30-25 Failure to comply with the Code of Professional Conduct (suspension)[POPUP_FOR_DETAILS]<br/><strong>Code breach(es):</strong> <ul><li>30-10(1) - You must act honestly and with integrity</li><li>30-10(7) - You must ensure that a tax agent service that you provide, or that is provided on your behalf, is provided competently</li><li>30-10(10) - You must take reasonable care to ensure that taxation laws are applied correctly to the circumstances in relation to which you are providing advice to a client</li></ul><br/><strong>Explanation:</strong> On 11 May 2023, after completing an investigation, the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) decided to suspend the tax agent registration of DHK Business Services Pty Ltd for a period of three months. The TPB found that DHK Business Services Pty Ltd breached subsections 30-10(1), 30-10(7), and 30-10(10) of the Code of Professional Conduct (Code) in the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 (TASA).<br>The TPB also ordered its director and sole supervising registered tax agent, Ms Debbie Kong, to complete and pass separate courses of education in the TASA (including the Code) and ethics, and to provide evidence of successful completion to the Board within six months. <br>The Board found that DHK Business Services Pty Ltd breached the Code by:<br>1. Failing to act honestly and with integrity by:<br>a. Registering clients for Pay As You Go Withholding (PAYGW) with backdated registration dates for the sole or dominant purpose of making clients entitled to a Cash Flow Boost (CFB) or Jobkeeper payment.<br>b. Facilitating the change of clients’ PAYGW reporting obligations with the ATO on or around the announcement of the CFB stimulus measure in March 2020, in order to make clients eligible to receive a CFB payment when they otherwise would not have been entitled.<br>c. Failing to ensure clients correctly reported total salary, wages and other payments at labels W1 & W2 of their business activity statements (BAS).<br>d. Failing to correctly report wages in the March and June quarterly BAS for its client, resulting in the ATO:<br>i. Auditing the client and amending these BAS<br>ii. Determining the client was not eligible for CFB payments on the basis that the client did not satisfy the integrity rule by not correctly reporting the total salary, wages and other payments<br>iii. Forming a view that its client entered into and carried out a scheme for the sole or dominant purpose of increasing the amount of CFB payments to which it would otherwise have been entitled to receive had it correctly reported salary, wages and other payment amounts in these BAS<br>2. Failing to ensure that a tax agent service that it provided, or that was provided on its behalf, was provided competently, by preparing and lodging BAS and income tax returns on behalf of its client, in circumstances where the ATO audited the client and found it was not eligible for the CFB payments due to, among other things, failing to correctly report wage amounts in its March and June 2020 BAS.<br>3. Failing to take reasonable care to ensure that the taxation laws were applied correctly to the circumstances in relation to which it was providing advice to its clients, in circumstances where:<br>a. clients sought professional tax advice in relation to CFB eligibility and entitlement and were subsequently directed to the ATO website<br>b. clients were initially deemed eligible for CFB or received an increased CFB payment when those clients would otherwise not have been eligible, which the ATO subsequently determined that they were not entitled to receive those payments; and<br>c. the ATO’s objection decision determined that a client was not eligible to receive the increased CFB amounts on the basis that it was satisfied that the conduct of the client, acting on the advice and assistance from DHK Business Services Pty Ltd, amounted to the carrying out of a scheme for the sole or dominant purpose of increasing its CFB entitlement, under paragraph 5(1)(g) of the Boosting Cash Flow For Employers (Coronavirus Economic Response Package) Act 2020 (Cth).<br>