Courtney Ensor and Nicola Alroe successfully appeared for the Tax Practitioners Board in the recently decided Administrative Review Tribunal decisions Cavallaro and Tax Practitioners Board [2025] ARTA 2028 and 2030.
Ms Cavallaro was a registered tax agent, and the director of two companies which provided tax agent services. The Board determined that the registration of Ms Cavallaro and her companies should be terminated on the basis that Ms Cavallaro was not a fit and proper person. Ms Cavallaro and her companies sought review of the termination decisions, and confidentiality orders to prevent publication of their names in connection with the review applications.
The Tribunal affirmed the Board’s decisions to cancel the tax agent registrations and rejected the application for confidentiality orders.
In doing so, the Tribunal accepted the Board’s submissions:
- that a failure to check personally the accuracy of declarations made when seeking renewal of registration amounted to a failure to act honestly and a failure to act with integrity, in contravention of s 30-10(1) of the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 (Cth) (TASA); and
- that there was a long history of defaults in connection with the tax affairs of Ms Cavallaro and her companies, and that any personal circumstances of the applicants (including being the subject of a ransomware attack) did not explain the defaults.
In refusing to make the confidentiality orders sought, the Tribunal recognised that reasons of embarrassment are generally not sufficient to justify an order restricting publication or disclosure of information, and that the publication of reasons, including the identification of the parties who have engaged in conduct warranting sanctions under the TASA, serves a protective purpose to members of the public with whom the tax agent engages or might engage.
The full decisions can be found here (professional disciplinary decision) and here (confidentiality decision).
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