NTAA Condemns New Tax Advisory Panel As 'Unrepresentative'

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

17 July 2002

The newly established advisory panel to the Australian Board of Taxation has been criticised by the National Taxpayers and Accountants Association (NTAA) for failing to represent small businesses and ordinary taxpayers.

Major accounting firms such as Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu are represented on the 22 member panel, as are academics, law firms, and banks.

However, speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this week, Ray Regan, President of the NTAA condemned the fact that his organisation had not been asked to contribute, or to sit on the panel itself.

'I don't think that Deloittes understand how an average taxpayer earning an average of $30,000 a year thinks,' he observed, suggesting that maybe the NTAA had been excluded from the advisory panel 'because the government does not like people who challenge them.'

'It is a gentleman's club and the panel does not represent small businesses and does not represent ordinary taxpayers out there in the marketplace,' Mr Regan argued, adding that: 'I wonder if it is not just a voice for big business and for the movers and shakers of the top-200 companies.'

However, speaking to the SMH on Tuesday, Murray Edwards of the Board of Taxation Secretariat denied that the advisory panel was skewed towards big business, although he admitted that the absence of taxpayer and consumer representatives was deliberate, as: 'the objective was to select people known for their expertise.'

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