The Greens have also secured an amendment for “kicking the foxes out of the hen house” for transparency at the Tax Practitioner Board.
Tax advisers will have to dob in their colleagues’ wrongdoing or potentially face jail time, while big-four executives will be banned from membership of the regulating Tax Practitioner Board in a major overhaul of the system that enabled the PwC tax leak scandal.
The TPB also sanctioned PwC for failing to regulate conflicts of interest by partners and staff who knew the confidential information would be used to help clients sidestep the new tax laws and to attract new clients. “Never again will we have members of the Tax Practitioner Board financially tied to those same large tax agents they are regulating,” she said.The practitioners’ code of conduct will be updated to ensure advisers keep sensitive government information confidential, and not use that confidential information for personal or corporate advantage.
The government previously announced it would remove limitations in the tax secrecy laws that were a barrier to regulators’ response to