Small practice super auditors 'unfairly targeted', tax agent says

Accounting and Taxation Services agent Rosemarie King says ASIC is unfairly targeting smaller super auditors and accountants should not be at risk of losing their practice certificate for tax over a super-related item.

“I’m not a superannuation auditor. However, I can really sympathise on this one. Those who are in sole practice, who are in a small practice or a medium practice, who are auditors, they are getting their standard of auditing on superannuation funds as part of their quality assurance audit, which affects their practice,” Ms King said.

“The auditing on the superannuation audit is extremely rigid and I feel that an accountant shouldn’t be at risk of losing the practice certificate which is for tax on an item that is off superannuation audit.”

Ms King said small practice auditors are a “main target” of ASIC, while larger practices are not subject to the same “rigid” assessments as SMEs.

“The small practice, when they have their quality assurance audit, they are being picked up [as] the main target,” she said.

“If you get a large public company, and I use for example the financial advisers who buy up the tax practices, they’re public companies, they’ve got shares out in the public market on ASIC, they don’t seem to get the same audits and this makes it all very unfair.

“It seems that the small practitioner is targeted to be far more perfect than these big institutions because their whole practice is reliant on this quality assurance being absolutely perfect.”

Adding to the discussion, SuperAuditors director Shelly Banton said ASIC only investigates SMSF auditor matters that the ATO refers to them, as they’re the ones who monitor and enforce SMSF compliance.

“I’m sure the ATO has a hit list of SMSF auditors they would like to investigate but, like most government departments, are heavily under-resourced,” Ms Banton said.