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Accountants seek right to deliver ‘strategic’ advice

Mike Taylor5 February 2025
Advice fees

Accountants want to be able to provide financial advice but have told Treasury they do not want to compete with financial advisers in providing product and investment advice.

Rather, the Institute of Financial Professionals Australia (IFPA) says its members want to provide strategic and structural superannuation advice to their clients relating to their tax affairs.

At the same time, the IFPA has backed financial advisers being granted secure, read-only access to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) tax portal.

IFPA has used its pre-Budget submission to argue that if banks, superannuation funds and insurance companies are going to be allowed to provide advice to members, “accountants have the expertise and are just as competent as other providers to give advice to their clients”.

“To clarify, we are not requesting an exemption for accountants to offer financial product advice in relation to the underlying assets within a superannuation fund,” it said. “Providing product and investment advice remains the responsibility of a licensed relevant provider.”

“Rather, our members want to provide strategic and structural superannuation advice to their clients relating to their tax affairs. Examples of common superannuation related advice services include the ability to make contributions, commence a pension, establish and assist with operation of an SMSF, winding up an SMSF,” the submission said.

“If accountants are granted an exemption to provide strategic and structural advice, we believe financial advisers should also have the same exemption in those situations,” it said. “In other words, if this type of advice is not classified as ‘financial product advice’, then both accountants and financial advisers should follow the same rules regarding the need for a statement of advice (SOA) or record of advice (ROA).”

“It is paradoxical that accountants cannot provide such simple superannuation advice particularly when accountants have access to the tax agent portal and can see their client’s total superannuation balance, their available contribution cap space, contributions made by/for them through single touch payroll etc

“On the flipside, financial advisers who are licensed to provide this advice do not have access to their client’s information on the portal unless they are registered tax agents.

The submission went on to state that financial advises play a crucial role in developing tax-efficient strategies that help clients maximise their financial position, while remaining compliant.

Mike Taylor

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor/Publisher, Financial Newswire

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Fred
2 days ago

They can provide advice, they simply need to follow the same stupid rules as financial planners.

The already do
2 days ago
Reply to  Fred

Many Accountants do provide bucket loads of AFSL Advice, just without an AFSL, no SoAs, no ASIC or CSLR levies, no AFCA, etc
And zero action from ASIC who has never busted a single accountant for illegal AFSL advice.

Edward
2 days ago

if all of these carve out and exemptions are passed financial advisers will be the only ones not giving advice because we’ll still be hamstrung by the actual rules.

If nothing else it shows how ignorant so many people are of the technical aspects of advice and think they can just do it all easily. Accountants play an important role but I’ve met plenty who have a very narrow, tax only focus that causes them to miss the bigger picture or beneficial strategies in favour of a modest income tax benefit in the short term.

Brad
1 day ago

Accountants across the board are already providing advice, but they are not being held accountable to do the due diligence that a financial planner is. They do not provide SOAs or ROAs and are getting away with this as the regulator takes no action to stop this illegal advice.
If they are allowed to provide advice they should be held to the same standard as financial planners. No more, no less. A level playing field! Are we seriously going to look to introduce 3-4 different types of financial advisers. As with the Industry Funds accountants now want to carve out another area of advice without the regulation that planners must endure.
If they are allowed to advise in any way they should also have to carry the burden of the CSLR costs and hefty licensee and insurance costs planners must pay. This way we all may be able to pay less. Also the Industry Funds should be included to shoulder this burden if we are to have a level playing field in this advice industry.
They seem to want all the benefits of the advice industry without the cost or sufficient compliance burdens.