IPA National Congress: Day one highlights

IPA National Congress kicked off with a welcome session that set a clear agenda for the coming three days.

Yvonne Weldon, Deputy Chair of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, Deputy Chair of the NSW Australia Day Council, Board member of Domestic Violence NSW and Redfern Jarjum College, and Independent Councillor for the City of Sydney, encouraged attendees to consider the changes they could make in their communities.

“This year we had themes for Reconciliation and NAIDOC weeks, which were: ‘Be a voice for generations’ and ‘For our elders’. These things shouldn't be thought of during those weeks alone,” Weldon said.

“And it's not just about my people. It's about all of us together, to put into practice – into all that we do to make that positive change for multiple generations. We need to, we must create a connection for my people, your people and all our people together. As we reflected power in recent times, think about the difference you are making.”

IPA members also welcomed attendees to Congress, sharing, via video, what they think makes the IPA special.

Their comments were a sneak peek of what attendees can look forward to in the coming days: “When you say you're from the IPA, it makes you feel proud and the client is more confident”, “It’s excelled my career, it's helped my business”, “lobbying for our clients, lobbying for us to make sure that we can provide the most essential, targeted and relevant services for our clients”.

Finally, Julie Williams, just hours into her role as Immediate Past President after Tuesday’s AGM, introduced the IPA Group’s new board members, including President Cheryl Mallett FIPA FFA, and Deputy Presidents Annette Tasker FIPA FFA and Richard Allen FIPA FFA.

Life’s a pitch

Those who attended UniSA Business lecturer Gary Edwards’ pre-Congress webinar last week on ‘The art of communication’ had a headstart on Wednesday morning’s masterclass with Andrew Klein, former corporate lawyer turned presentation skills trainer.

Klein’s session title – Life’s a pitch – was no empty pun.

“I would argue that pretty much everything you do in a work context, and pretty much every day, is a pitch,” he said. “Even if you don't think you're in formal pitching mode, every communication that you have is a pitch.”

In a practical, deep discussion he shared tips accountants can use to communicate with clients more effectively and to make their businesses stand out from the competition.

Why is this important? Because, Klein explained, a great accountant is only known as a great accountant by their clients who’ve experienced their work – everyone else judges them on the pitch they can see – their website, emails, social media presence and more.

Klein shared four ways to cut through the noise.

1 Be authentic in all settings

Some people naturally bring their authentic selves to a presentation stage or to each conversation, Klein explained. Others leave the interesting, engaging parts of themselves out of their presentations, off their websites and out of professional conversations.

Klein explained that, while he would assume a qualified accountant could do accounting, that wouldn’t mean he would do business with them. They’d be far more likely to win his business if he understood who they were and liked them.

“Why is your potential client going to choose you?” he asked. “Why you? Why your business? Why your offering?”

2 Strive for simplicity

Make that offering sound and feel as simple as possible.

“And that's hard – I accept that. That's because your offerings are often complex as I've said earlier. It is technical, the stuff that you talk about, but that's your problem as the accountant. That's not my problem as the potential customer or client. That's your problem,” Klein said.

“Your role is to take the complexity, deal with the complexity behind the scenes – I don't want to know about the complexity – but then pitch it to me in a way that isn't complex. Still the same content, but you've done the heavy lifting behind the scenes to present it upfront to me, and the way you're engaging with me is as simple as it possibly can be.”

3 Use short videos to explain complex topics

People consume videos much more readily than they do written words, particularly the millennials that are now a large part of the workforce.

“Use videos over long documents if you can, including rough videos – you do not need to be perfect,” Klein said.

“If you've gone to the trouble of summarising or putting out there some wonderful document that explains new changes to superannuation law or taxation … you can create a long document or maybe you can put it together in a video.”

Klein also suggested taking care with the video length – those younger clients and potential clients you are communicating with are no more likely to watch a 15-minute video than to digest a long document.

4 Use humour

“One of the most engaging things – if it comes comfortably to you and only if it comes comfortably to you – is to try to just be a little bit lighthearted,” Klein said. “Humour tends to cut through more effectively than anything else.”

Funding the Future panel: Tax reform

IPA General Manager of Technical Policy Tony Greco opened the session by asking any audience member who did not believe there was a case for tax reform in Australia to raise a hand. None did.

“The people in this room understand that we have an unsustainable situation, that we pass it on to the next generation,” Greco said. “We have a problem to solve and you don't have to go too far to be reminded of what is coming.”

Greco was referring to the recent Sixth Intergenerational Report [add link], which found that increasing demand for Commonwealth expenditure and “baked in” structural deficits for the coming decade would combine with decreasing productivity growth and an ageing population to place more pressure on a narrowing tax base.

Greco identified three levers:

1. Decrease Commonwealth expenditure, the likelihood of which is best explained with Greco’s words: “good luck with that”. The Intergenerational Report explains why expenditure reduction is unlikely.
2. Grow the economy, and Greco noted that even if possible, it would not be enough. “If you strip immigration out of economic growth, there is hardly any growth,” he said. “We’ve become a service economy. How can we create productivity gains when we’re a service economy?”
3. Change the tax mix. “The elephant in the room is income tax. It accounts for 60% of revenue,” Greco said. And that 60% is only going up as consumption of items subject to excise – tobacco, internal combustion engine vehicles – reduces and as spending trends among older generations shift away from items subject to GST.

Inspector-General of Taxation & Taxation Ombudsman Karen Payne kept up the tax reform focus, discussing the governance and process of revenue collection practices.

“What is sometimes missing in our tax debate and tax discussion is ‘What's the roadmap?’, ‘What are the governance structures?’ and ‘What are the processes?’,” Payne noted. “How are we going to process and implement this, and operationalise this, if we are genuine about getting from A to B?”

Her office is concerned with whether we have processes and governance in place, and her role as IGTO is improving tax administration – a narrow policy scope, Payne explained.

“But it's important … we're there to make sure that tax and super laws that have been enacted, the stuff that Parliament has passed, are working fairly. And, if not, our role is to identify what's not working fairly or appropriately and what could be improved, and to identify and advise ministers on how that should be improved.”

Payne wrapped up by emphasising that, while there is no shortage of ideas about how the tax system could be improved, her priority is making sure a process, roadmap and governance structures are in place for that journey from A to B.

Proving Payne’s point, Prosper President Catherine Cashmore offered an alternate vision for tax reform, guided by the ways that tax shapes behaviour.

“Tax is not just needing to raise revenue – we need to wipe that out of the tax system. And we also need to wipe out the myth that we need to maintain government surpluses and that government debt is necessarily a bad thing,” Cashmore said.

“The emphasis needs to be on how the tax system encourages and discourages behaviour. And unfortunately the tax system that we have at the moment places a lot of energy into taxing people’s earnings. And by earnings I mean their work, through their enterprise, through the sweat of their brow,” she said. “We tax other incomes quite lightly. We tax land quite lightly by comparison.”

Cashmore argued that shifting taxes away from labour and productivity would stimulate productivity within the economy – and that taxing land would not have a long term and great detrimental impact on land value.

Finally, Andrew Leigh MP, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury; and Assistant Minister for Employment joined the panel remotely from Ngunnawal Country. He quickly offered an alternative point B – corporate taxes.

“For too long we’ve seen a race to the bottom in company taxes,” Leigh said, pointing out the ease with which companies can locate their operations in a jurisdiction with favourable tax treatment, rather than where the employees are.

Measures that can be used to minimise corporate tax liabilities, including debt deduction loopholes, can provide some balance for competing small businesses at the same time as increasing tax revenue without increasing the burden on individual taxpayers.

Register to join the IPA National Congress live stream days two and three, 30 November and 1 December 2023.